Midnight Timetable
A Novel in Ghost Stories
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
From the author and translator of the National Book Award finalist and Booker Prize shortlisted Cursed Bunny, comes a novel-in-ghost-stories, set in a mysterious research center that houses cursed objects, where those who open the wrong door might find it’s disappeared behind them, or that the echoing footsteps they’re running from are their own…
The acclaimed Korean horror and sci-fi writer’s goosebump-inducing new book follows an employee on the night shift at the Institute. They soon learn why some employees don't last long at the center. The handkerchief in Room 302 once belonged to the late mother of two sons, whose rivalry imbues the handkerchief with undue power and unravels the lives of those who seek to possess it. Meanwhile a live-streaming, ghost-chasing employee steals a cursed sneaker down the hall, but later finds he can’t escape its tread. The cat in Room 206 begins to reveal the crimes of its former family, wanting to understand its own path to the Institute’s dimly lit halls.
But Chung's haunted institute isn't just a chilling place to play. As in her astounding collections Cursed Bunny and Your Utopia, these violent allegories subtly excavate the horrors of animal cosmetic testing, “conversion therapy,” domestic abuse, and late-stage capitalism. Equal parts bone-chilling, wryly funny, and deeply political, Midnight Timetable is a masterful work of literary horror from one of our time's greatest imaginations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chung (Cursed Bunny) serves up a chilling novel-in-ghost-stories set within the eerie, echoing halls of a mysterious research institute that exists to both study cursed objects and keep them contained. At the institute, doors vanish, footsteps echo with no one there, and employees disappear as easily as memories. One night shift, worker Sook sets out to catalog the supernatural histories attached to various items and people in the facility, among them a handkerchief charged with the fury of sibling rivalry, a stolen sneaker seeking revenge, and a man so entirely unremarkable that it takes a while for Sook to notice how often he appears at random and blocks the way. Sook goes from room to room at the institute, each one opening into a discrete tale of horror, that ultimately come together to form a dark mirror reflecting deeper societal traumas, like animal testing, conversion therapy, domestic abuse, and the dehumanizing grind of late-stage capitalism. With a bone-dry wit and biting allegorical edge, expertly captured in Hur's translation, Chung turns the haunted-object trope into a vehicle for radical empathy and sharp critique. Part fable, part ghost story, and part social commentary, this is a beautiful and devastating excavation of how people make sense of the world's violence and tragedies.
