Sublimation
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jun 2, 2026
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A most-anticipated title from USA Today, Glamour, LitHub, New Scientist, The Nerd Daily, Library Journal, and more!
Doppelgängers, corporate intrigue, heartbreak, betrayal, and the harsh permanence of the border: Sublimation is a thrilling and provocative debut for fans of Severance that asks what you'd sacrifice for a different life from award-winning author Isabel J. Kim.
“One of the best debuts of the year.” —John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling author of Starter Villain
The border cuts you in two.
When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind, an instance. One person enters their new country; the other stays trapped at home.
Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten years old and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather died and her Korean instance called her home for the funeral.
She doesn’t know that Soyoung plans to steal her body and her life.
How far would you go to live the choice you didn’t make?
“After Sublimation, the immigrant story will never be the same.” —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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.
