Untold Night and Day

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Let me say up-front that I have never regarded myself as a Bae Suah fan. My first encounter with her – Highway with Green Apples – registers in my memory as no more than a grey blur. By the time of my second encounter, Nowhere to be Found, people were increasingly talking about her with admiration. I read it twice to see whether I had missed anything the first time round. I hadn’t. 1 Deborah Smith (@londonkoreanist) was born in Doncaster in 1987. She studied English and then Korean literature in the UK, and has translated several books by Bae Suah and Han Kang. She publishes Asian literatures in translation through Tilted Axis Press, which she founded in 2015. The most obvious narrative strategy is the use of repetition - again and again, we encounter the exact same phrases and descriptions in different contexts, like the skirt that flutters "like an old dishcloth", the feeling as if "someone were hammering a nail into the crown of (one's) head", "capillaries webbing the whites of (someone's) eyes", a dead body "in the space between ceiling and the roof of (someone's) house", and many, many more. People do the same things or the same features are ascribed to them, sometimes only slightly varied. The disorienting effect turns the characters into ghosts and Seoul into am almost liquid space, ever quivering and oscillating. The whole novel can also be read as a pastiche of The Blind Owl, the main work of Iranian writer and early modernist Sadegh Hedayat, a book that is mentioned in various different contexts in Bae Suah's novel. Hedayat's text about a pen case painter confessing his nightmares and obsession with death to a shadow shaped as an owl is also non-linear, surreal, dream-like and relies heavily on repetition while challenging (in this case Iranian) literary traditions; at one point, Ayami even sees "her own huge shadow wavering on the wall". title story translated as Highway with Green Apples by Sora Kim-Russell: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Ayami has an appointment for 8 p.m. at a nearby restaurant. Recalling this, she wakes from her false death. A startling and boundary-pushing novel, Untold Night and Day tells the story of a young woman’s journey through Seoul over the course of a night and a day. It’s 28-year-old Ayami’s final day at her box-office job in Seoul’s audio theater. Her night is spent walking the sweltering streets of the city with her former boss in search of Yeoni, their missing elderly friend, and her day is spent looking after a mysterious, visiting poet. Their conversations take in art, love, food, and the inaccessible country to the north. Which girlfriend?’ Ayami asked, but she’d already decided to take the director up on his suggestion and go for private German lessons (or French, it didn’t really matter. At any rate, she had the sense not to expect that either would be of any practical use). Suah’s surreal and poetical depiction of a few days in the life of the laconic and almost lifeless Ayami is one of the most startlingly original novels of recent years. Part dreamscape, part nightmare, the city which Suah depicts alternates between a sinister sense of emptiness and claustrophobic business, as the reader feels like they are experiencing the same narratives over and over again, to the point that it becomes disorientating, the reader unsure as to what is true and what is fiction, or, to put it differently the reader is made acutely aware that they are inside a work of fiction where nothing is real. This is made most apparent towards the end of the novel, as the mysterious writer of detective stories, Wolfi, reveals the mystery behind the multiple narratives which run through the story whilst penning his upcoming detective story.No one had come to meet her on her first visit to the audio theatre, and she hadn’t received any guidance about where she was supposed to go. She’d entered the deserted auditorium and waited until someone appeared – the director. She’d been sitting facing the entrance, but still hadn’t noticed him come in. He seemed to have materialised through a door made of light, which hovered amid the floating dust motes and shafts of sun. The director sat with Ayami on the auditorium’s second flight of stairs, conducted a brief interview, and announced that she was hired. as cryptic and compelling as a fever dream … a vivid and disorienting exploration of identity, artifice and compulsion And the man’s blue trainers. His whispering, clearly discernible despite the intervening glass. The blood filigree lacing his eyes, his sandpaper lips, that intense yet inscrutable emotion. An emotion shredding the fibres from her heart, pulverising it, yet strangely enough with a calming effect, conscious thought sifting slowly down into a bottomless abyss. He’s just a bit different … but he’s not violent. He certainly wouldn’t harm someone for no reason. And if you didn’t open the door, how could you have understood everything he said?’ One of Picasso’s ex-girlfriends earned a living teaching French to American women in Paris,’ the director said. ‘It must be a classic step to take, one that transcends the ages.’

There must be a power cut in the whole neighbourhood,’ the director grumbled. They passed through the kitchen into the other room. And we are here as on a darkling plain, Swept with confused alarums of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. You must have misheard. Or else it was a joke, and you misunderstood.’ The German-language teacher’s voice was gentle, dismissive. Ayami tightened her grip on the phone. You could do worse than get in touch with them,’ the director told her. ‘After all, you know they never advertise for new staff – it’s all done through personal recommendations.’ Reading the lips of someone you can’t see, someone on the other end of a phone line – perhaps it was an illusion, after all.But that’s only temporary! And this so-called poet, apparently coming from abroad, has provided no contract stating how much you’ll be paid and when. What if he arrives at the airport, looks around, says, “Hmm, I don’t fancy this place after all, I’d prefer to go elsewhere,” then what’ll you do?’ For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.