Description
Yewon is trapped. She's stuck in Dalbit, the small Korean village of her birth, where the ancestral bones of her relatives live in her bathtub. Reeling from the loss of her father, she works long days at the convenience store and tries to keep the peace between her mother and sister, who are constantly at each others' throats.
But the nightmares are coming. Her little brother has just been conscripted into the Korean army, and he's stationed near the North Korean border, sent to the frontlines of a decades-long war that they no longer understand. As news coverage about the North breaking armistice comes into sickeningly sharp relief, Yewon's dreams about the ravaged hotel - where the war rages on - start to seep into her reality, and she is forced to confront the truth of her country, and the full weight of her inheritance...
Stylish, visceral and haunting, The Invisible Hotel is an unforgettable literary horror about the human consequences of a war that has continued for over seven decades, and the toll of being born into a conflict that shows no signs of stopping.
About the Author
Yeji Y. Ham is a Korean Canadian writer. She received her B.A. in Creative Writing from University of British Columbia (2014) and M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University (2016). At Brown, she taught fiction workshops and completed a short story collection titled Doraesol. A part of the collection was awarded the Frances Mason Harris' 26 Prizes in Fiction. She hopes that through writing, the stories of the voiceless and the forgotten would be brought out into the world.
Reviews
The Invisible Hotel wrestles artfully with big, vital questions: how do we honour and care for our elders without reinforcing a cycle of generational trauma? How do we forge new, joyful paths without indulging in mass cultural amnesia or closing our eyes to a world on fire? That it does so in a surreal, riveting, keep-the-lights-on masterwork of horror is all the more extraordinary. I will be haunted by this book for years to come. * Kim Fu, author of LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY *
Book Information
ISBN 9781805460336
Author Yeji Y. Ham
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Atlantic Books
Publisher Atlantic Books