Book Description
“Her fiction is a breath-taking piece of a cinematic art itself. Reminiscent of the world we experienced in Matrix, Inception, and Dark City, still it leads us to this entirely original structure, which is a ground-breaking, mystic literary and cinematic experience. Indeed, powerful and graceful.”—Bong Joon-ho, Oscar-winning director of Parasite
In this mind-expanding work of speculative fiction, available in English for the first time, one of South Korea’s most treasured writers explores the driving forces of humanity—love, hope, creation, destruction, and the very meaning of existence—in two pairs of thematically interconnected stories.
Two worlds, four stories, infinite possibilities
In “I’m Waiting for You” and “On My Way,” an engaged couple coordinate their separate missions to distant corners of the galaxy to ensure—through relativity—they can arrive back on Earth simultaneously to make it down the aisle. But small incidents wreak havoc on space and time, driving their wedding date further away. As centuries on Earth pass and the land and climate change, one thing is constant: the desire of the lovers to be together. In two separate yet linked stories, Kim Bo-Young cleverly demonstrate the idea love that is timeless and hope springs eternal, despite seemingly insurmountable challenges and the deepest despair.
In “The Prophet of Corruption” and “That One Life,” humanity is viewed through the eyes of its creators: godlike beings for which everything on Earth—from the richest woman to a speck of dirt—is an extension of their will. When one of the creations questions the righteousness of this arrangement, it is deemed a perversion—a disease—that must be excised and cured. Yet the Prophet Naban, whose “child” is rebelling, isn’t sure the rebellion is bad. What if that which is considered criminal is instead the natural order—and those who condemn it corrupt? Exploring the dichotomy between the philosophical and the corporeal, Kim ponders the fate of free-will, as she considers the most basic of questions: who am I?
About the Author and Translators
Bo-Young Kim won the inaugural Korean Science & Technology Creative Writing Award with her first published novella in 2004 and has gone on to win the annual South Korean Science Fiction Novel Award three times. In addition to writing, she regularly serves as a lecturer, juror and editor of sci-fi anthologies, and served as a consultant to Parasite director Bong Joon Ho’s earlier sci-fi film Snowpiercer. She has novellas forthcoming from HarperCollins in 2021. She lives in Gangwon Province, South Korea, with her family.
Sophie Bowman is a Korean to English translator. Born and raised in London, she spent her twenties in Seoul learning Korean and is now spending her thirties in Toronto researching twentieth century Korean literature.
Sung Ryu is a literary translator working from and into Korean. Her English translations include Shoko’s Smile by Choi Eunyoung (Penguin Books, 2021), Tower by Bae Myung-hoon (Honford Star, 2021), and I’m Waiting for You: And Other Stories by Kim Bo-Young (co-translated with Sophie Bowman, Harper Voyager, 2021). Her Korean translations include Grandma Moses: My Life’s History by Anna Mary Robertson Moses (Suo Books, 2017). She grew up in South Korea, the US, and Canada, and now lives in Singapore. She is a member of the translator collective Smoking Tigers.
