Sublimation
'A mind bending thriller' - R. F. KUANG, author of Yellowface and Katabasis
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- £0.99
Publisher Description
The international bestseller. A masterful tale of doppelgängers, betrayal and uncovering who you are.
'A mind bending thriller about personhood, homeland nostalgia, global migration, and all forms of alienation' – R. F. Kuang, author of Yellowface and Katabasis
'Brilliantly realised, imaginative and compelling' – The Guardian
When you emigrate, you leave a version of yourself behind. One instance crosses the border; the other instance stays trapped behind it.
Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, synchronize their lives and minds in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Other instances, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at age ten and never speak to their other selves again.
With a life of her own in New York, Rose never imagined she’d return to Korea. Then her grandfather dies and Soyoung, her Korean instance, summons her home for the funeral.
But Soyoung’s motives aren’t as innocent as Rose imagined, and the consequences of Rose’s return to Seoul will change her forever.
Soyoung plans to steal her body – and her life.
From Nebula Award-winning author Isabel J. Kim, Sublimation is an immigrant tale like no other, capturing the longing for another life and twisting it into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse.
'Remarkable' – The New York Times
'One of the best debuts of the year' – John Scalzi
5 STAR READER REVIEWS
‘This book had me hooked from the very first chapter’ *****
‘One of the best debut novels I’ve read in recent years’ *****
‘Wow. what a thought provoking and thoughtful novel’ *****
‘An incredible concept for a book’ *****
‘Sublimation lives up to the hype’ *****
‘A harshly beautiful story about the impossible choices in life and what could be’ *****
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nebula Award winner Kim debuts with a strikingly original work of speculative fiction that brilliantly uses an audacious conceit—that immigration literally splits a person into two separate "instances" of themselves, one who moves to their new home and one who stays behind—to excavate questions of identity, belonging, and assimilation. Soyoung Rose Kang instanced at age 10 when she and her mother emigrated from Korea to the U.S., and the two versions of herself haven't spoken in 20 years. When their grandfather dies, Rose returns to Korea for the funeral and is forced to reckon with the stranger her Korean self has become. The novel interweaves Rose and Soyoung's fraught reunion with a story line following Soyoung's best friend, Yujin, and his more recently instanced American counterpart, YJ, whose careful coordination with each other offers a pointed contrast to Soyoung's and Rose's estrangement. Meanwhile, large corporations are looking to commodify the process of reintegrating separate instances. Kim's worldbuilding is impeccable, extending so far as to reimagine classic literature through the lens of instancing ("In the narrative, Odysseus dislikes the man his instance became after he left for Troy—weak willed and unable to stand up to his wife's suitors"). The gorgeously rendered and deeply unsettling second-person narration enhances the intense and emotional reading experience. The result is a sharp, deeply felt first outing from a writer already at the top of her game.
