Untold Night and Day

Bae Suah

Save:

"Untold Night and Day" by Bae Suah is a surreal and experimental novel that follows Ayami, an actress, on a journey through the hot, dark streets of Seoul. The story blurs the lines between reality and imagination, with recurring characters and motifs that challenge the reader to question the connections and meanings behind them. The prose is described as sleek and dreamlike, creating a narrative that feels like a jungle cat - powerful and captivating, yet elusive in its full understanding.

The novel unfolds in a cyclical and confusing manner, with events seen through the window of a car driving at night, where characters merge into each other and surreal dreams blend with reality. As the day progresses, the heat and humidity increase, adding to the surreal quality of the story. The translator's note by Deborah Smith enhances the novel, elevating it to another realm and providing insights into the motifs and imagery that intensify as the story reaches its peak.

Characters:

The characters, particularly Ayami, navigate personal struggles with themes of loneliness and identity, often merging into one another's stories.

Writing/Prose:

The writing style is metered and intense, filled with repetition and rich in metaphor, creating a dreamlike and poetic experience.

Plot/Storyline:

The plot is a cleverly constructed and surreal narrative that delves into themes of identity and perception, blurring lines between reality and imagination.

Setting:

The setting in Seoul during a surreal summer enhances the dreamlike quality, with characters wandering an oppressive city that reflects their inner turmoil.

Pacing:

The pacing varies, starting more linear before becoming slow and cyclic, leading to a disorienting experience for many readers.

With the lights off, the interior of the auditorium seemed as though submerged in murky water. Objects, matter itself, were softly disintegrating. All identity became ambiguous, semi-opaque. Not only ...

Notes:

The novel 'Untold Night and Day' by Bae Suah explores deep themes of identity and perception.

It features Ayami, an actress working at a theatre for the blind in Seoul, which is about to close.

The story unfolds during a hot summer day in Seoul, blending reality and surrealism.

Readers often describe the narrative as a fever dream, filled with repetitive motifs and cyclical events.

The translator, Deborah Smith, enhances the text with a captivating Translator's Note.

At just 160 pages, many find it feels longer due to its complex structure and rich symbolism.

The writing style is likened to that of surrealist authors like Kafka and Sebald, showcasing long sentences and dreamlike imagery.

The book has been compared to the work of Haruki Murakami, though it avoids some of the common tropes found in his writing.

It draws inspiration from the Persian novel 'The Blind Owl' and serves as a retelling of sorts.

Some readers describe the experience as disorienting, resulting in mixed feelings about the narrative's coherence.

Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings

Content warnings for the book include themes of disorientation, psychological distress, and potentially unsettling imagery.

From The Publisher:

A seductive, disorienting novel that manipulates the fragile line between dreams and reality, unfolding over a day and a night in the sweltering heat of Seoul's summer, by South Korea's leading contemporary writer

It's 28-year-old Ayami's final day at her box-office job in Seoul's only audio theater for the blind. The theater is shutting down and Ayami's future is uncertain.

Her last shift completed, Ayami walks the streets of the city with her former boss late into the night, searching for a mutual friend who is missing. Their conversations take in art, love, food, and the inaccessible country to the north. The next day, Ayami acts as a guide for a detective novelist visiting from abroad. Almost immediately, in the heat of Seoul at the height of the summer, order gives way to chaos as the edges of reality start to fray. Ayami enters a world of increasingly tangled threads, and the past intrudes upon the present as overlapping realities repeat, collide, change, and reassert themselves.

Blisteringly original, Untold Night and Day upends the very structure of fiction and narrative storytelling and burns itself upon the soul of the reader. By one of the boldest and most innovative voices in contemporary Korean literature, and masterfully realized in English by Man Booker International Prize-winning translator Deborah Smith, Bae Suah's hypnotic novel asks whether more than one version of ourselves can exist at once, demonstrating the malleable nature of reality as we know it.

Ratings (2)

Loved It (1)
Liked It (1)

Reader Stats (17):

Read It (2)
Want To Read (13)
Did Not Finish (1)
Not Interested (1)

What can you read after
Untold Night and Day?

See the list (100 books)

Meet New Books is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a way for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to products and services on amazon.com and its subsidiaries.
When you click the Amazon link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commision, at no cost to you.