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The Cabinet

Un-su Kim author Sean Lin Halbert translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Watkins Media Limited

Published:12th Oct '21

Should be back in stock very soon

The Cabinet cover

Winner of the Munhakdongne Novel Award, South Korea’s most prestigious literary prize Cabinet 13 looks exactly like any normal filing cabinet. Except this cabinet is filled with files on the ‘symptomers’, people whose weird abilities and bizarre experiences might just mark the emergence of a new species. But to Mr Kong, the harried office worker who spends his days looking after the cabinet, the symptomers are just a headache; from the woman whose doppelganger broke up with her boyfriend, to the man with a ginkgo tree growing from his fingertip. And then there’s that guy who won’t stop calling, asking to be turned into a cat… A richly funny and fantastical novel about the strangeness at the heart of even the most ordinary lives, from one of South Korea’s most acclaimed novelists. Translated by Sean Lin Halbert File Under: Fiction [ 12,000 Cans of Beer | Memory Mosaicers | Will Execution Inc. | Monkey of All Bombs ]

"[A] brilliant mosaic novel...These stories straddle the lines between science fiction, fantasy, fairy tale, and acute reality."
"Un-su Kim is a tremendous writer"
"Showcases his sly, surreal, dark humor about all the ways humans are, well, not particularly human."
"This charming and fantastical book is sure to introduce Kim to a whole new legion of weird fiction fans, ideal for readers of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and the works of Haruki Murakami."
"Kim deftly juggles both macro-level and micro-level ideas about social roles, purpose, and personal narrative." 
"What begins as a rather whimsical set of stories turns into a much darker novel, raising issues of difference and acceptance, what people must do to survive, and what is truly monstrous."
"Surprising and enchanting"
"comic, heartbreaking and terrifying."

ISBN: 9780857669179

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

304 pages

New edition