The story starts with a pair of red shoes and a deal with the devil. But where it ends is up to reader - sort of.
That's the concept behind Indonesian author Intan Paramaditha's latest novel, The Wandering.
It's been longlisted for the Stella Prize - Australia's book award for women and non-binary authors - which this year features the most diverse array of writers in its eight-year history.
More than half of those longlisted are writers of colour, many of them Asian-Australian. The list is also diverse in form, with works of fiction, non-fiction, essays, young adult novels and short stories making the cut.
Among them, Paramaditha's book is unique - translated from Bahasa Indonesia by Stephen Epstein, it's a 'choose your own adventure' novel, where the reader makes choices that skip them to different pages, taking each on a divergent path.
It's about "the illusion of having choices", Paramaditha told the ABC.
"Because no, you don't really have choices. Actually, everything is sort of predetermined for you."
She's no stranger to wandering herself, having lived in Jakarta, New York and now Sydney.
Her book probes questions of travel and migration, including what it means to be displaced or "in between".
"When you are outside . the story of my people and my culture, it feels invisible," she said.
Readers have described a feeling of FOMO - fear of missing out - that parallels with the experience of travel.
"We're often either emotionally disturbed or feeling that we've passed something, but we didn't really experience it," she said.
Her work is shaped by her own migration and heritage, and the book interweaves fairy tales and Indonesian folk stories, but it also resists stereotypical expectations of books from South-East Asia.
"I wanted to reclaim cosmopolitanism, but from the perspective of the third world, because I feel that we are expected to write in a particular way due to our culture," she said.
"Stories coming from Indonesia are usually expected to have certain elements, for instance, the elements of trauma, and there's some exoticism there, some traditional culture."
Paramaditha said travel writing has often been the realm of white men, and she was interested in the exclusion and privilege of travel - ideas that persist in the era of COVID-19, where virtual mobility and connection are more difficult in some parts of the world.
'Belonging is a rug that can be pulled out from under you'
Elizabeth Tan said her short-story collection, Smart Ovens for Lonely People, resembles a room of terrariums - a reference to one of the scenes in the book.
The stories "have their roots in something recognisable and familiar, something connected to our contemporary reality, but have unfurled in their own weird, unreal directions," she said.
Tan's parents are from Singapore and she and her siblings were born in Perth.
"I think I've always felt like my connection to my heritage is tenuous - there and not there," she said.
"I think that, coming from a migrant background, you learn quickly that you have to work a little harder to make yourself into the right shape to belong, but you also learn that belonging is a rug that can be pulled out from under you at any time.
"I felt that in the '90s when a white classmate told me that her parents voted for One Nation; I've been feeling it again these pandemic years, hearing stories about hostility at the supermarket, Asian people spat on, graffiti on garage doors."
She said this mindset would have shaped her early approach to writing, and that she often sought the "correct" answer, as well as acceptance.
That has made being longlisted more meaningful, she said.
"It was not correctness I should have been striving for but emotional authenticity," she said.
Representation is necessary, but not enough
SL Lim, who was born in Singapore and moved to Australia when they were one, is the first non-binary author to be longlisted for the prize.
Their novel, Revenge: Murder in Three Parts, is about a "person who wants everything," Lim said.
"She wants love and sex and adventure, and all of these good things. And because she's born poor, and because she's born on the wrong side of a border too, she gets none of these things," they said.
That boils into anger that is first turned inward, and then outward in shocking ways.
Their work is not thinly-veiled autobiography. Instead, Lim is "creating something which has a meaning and a kind of coherence to itself, which exists and has value regardless of whether I exist".
"I think that feeling displaced and disembodied and alienated, and like a sort of meat puppet moving in a somewhat hostile world, is an experience which is not unique to the migrated," they said.
In a way, they said, the novel looks at what happens to people when there's a sudden change in their circumstances.
Lim said a lot of Singaporeans become economists in Australia, revealing an interest in money.
"I think that that is something which reflects a very sudden economic transformation and trajectory in Singapore, from being a place where a lot of people experiencing poverty in a very immediate physical sense to a place where, you know, it's a very wealthy country now," they said.
"Of course, there's massive inequality. And there are people who still experienced poverty, but the conditions have changed. And that does something to people."
Lim said while there was a lot of talk about representation, having more diversity in race and gender was not enough.
"I would really caution against thinking that representation, in and of itself, is an anti-racist act," they said.
"Representation is necessary, but it's in no way a sufficient condition for a [politics of liberation]."
'The legacy of white supremacy in our national literature'
The prize was named for Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, an alternative to the Miles Franklin Literary Award - billed as Australia's most prestigious book prize and set up by the author of My Brilliant Career.
But last year, the Stella's management said it would reflect on the name of the prize over questions of fascism, due to her links to Australia First, an anti-Semitic, ultra-nationalist group.
"Miles Franklin was a fascist. Prizes should not be named after fascists," Lim said.
Last year, Stella said it would be acknowledging the problematic connection between its namesake and colonisation.
"As we read, we'll be actively reflecting on the legacy of white supremacy in our national literature. We know this is just a starting point, and there will be more work to do," the organisation said on Twitter.
Stella's executive director, Jaclyn Booton, said that work "continues through our programs".
"The question of whose voices and stories aren't being heard and how can we amplify and celebrate those writers is central to everything we do," she said, adding the organisation also runs school programs, writers' residencies and counts the gender divide in reviewed books.
"And - as the 2021 Stella Prize longlist demonstrates - First Nations women, and Asian and South-East Asian authors are telling incredible stories and crafting exceptional books," she said.
The Stella Prize shortlist will be announced tomorrow.