My Dahlia and Other Stories — Shamsuddin Jaafar

There is a small town where the river meets the Straits of Melaka. It is one of those laidback small towns where everything moves at a snails pace, perched on the very edge of modernity and antiquity.
This is a place where one would think that nothing ever happens. But, people talk and they tell stories of things that happened to other people. Stories of a man who cared too much that he is blind to his own bad influence, of people desperate for love, of one who dare not risk another heart-break, of one who desires for that they cannot have and of a person who just want to be loved.
These are people whose desire blurred the thin line between love, lust and loneliness.