Table for One
Stories
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An office worker who has no one to eat lunch with enrolls in a course that builds confidence about eating alone. A man with a pathological fear of bedbugs offers up his body to save his building from infestation. A time capsule in Seoul is dug up hundreds of years before it was intended to be unearthed. A vending machine repairman finds himself trapped in a shrinking motel during a never-ending snowstorm.
In these and other indelible short stories, contemporary South Korean author Yun Ko-eun conjures up slightly off-kilter worlds tucked away in the corners of everyday life. Her fiction is bursting with images that toe the line between realism and the fantastic. Throughout Table for One, comedy and an element of the surreal are interwoven with the hopelessness and loneliness that pervades the protagonists' decidedly mundane lives. Yun's stories focus on solitary city dwellers, and her eccentric, often dreamlike humor highlights their sense of isolation. Mixing quirky and melancholy commentary on densely packed urban life, she calls attention to the toll of rapid industrialization and the displacement of traditional culture. Acquainting the English-speaking audience with one of South Korea's breakout young writers, Table for One presents a parade of misfortunes that speak to all readers in their unconventional universality.
About this Author
Yun Ko-eun is the award-winning author of five novels and four short story collections. Born in 1980, she lives in Seoul.
Lizzie Buehler is the translator of The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun and Korean Teachers by Seo Su-jin. She holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa and has studied comparative literature at Princeton and Harvard.
Reviews
A "Most Anticipated" Book of Spring 2024
I was introduced to Yun Ko-eun's utterly distinctive stories through Lizzie Buehler's passionate, meticulous translations, and I have never forgotten them. Each of these narratives is blunt, unnerving, gripping; Yun's prose is razor-sharp, as is her portrayal of the alienation of day-to-day life. Table for One is an exciting contribution to contemporary Korean literature in English.
Weirdly wonderful and wonderfully weird.
Table for One showcases Yun Ko-eun's literary prowess and her ability to illuminate the subtle beauty found in the ordinary moments of our lives. These stories are intricately crafted, psychologically complex, and deeply moving. This a remarkable collection and one that I will be returning to for many years to come.
Reflecting the quirky and dysfunctional interiority of its characters, Table for One provides a unique insight into modern Koreans. Yun has a distinct literary personality that puts her in the company of major contemporary Korean women writers like Pyun Hye-young, Jo Kyung-ran, Han Kang, and Han Yujoo.
Each of these strange, spare, cleverly imagined, and compelling tales has a strong sense of place and portrays everyday folks living in South Korea who are just trying their best to fit in, get by, and pursue a slice of happiness.
Surreal and comedic, this story collection mostly terrified me. I loved it.
These nine subtly surreal tales depict people at their most vulnerable and isolated, dislocated from those around them . . . A strong collection.
Table for One will strike a chord with many city dwellers: some will find in it an amusing mix of reality and fantasy, while others might shudder at their own reflection.
It is with [a] throughline of laughter and warmth that Table for One explores the teeming expanse of life, that always seems to begin just to the left of where we're looking.
The collection achieves the right balance between variation and consistency to read as a satisfying book...Table For One shows Yun as a varied writer capable of taking on horror, science fiction, and literary fiction.
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