Untold Night and Day

by Bae Suah, Deborah Smith (Translator)

A hypnotic, disorienting story of parallel lives unfolding over a day and a night in the sweltering heat of Seoul's summer

For two years, twenty-eight-year-old Kim Ayami has worked at Seoul's only audio theatre for the blind. But now the theatre is shutting down and Ayami’s future is uncertain.

Her last shift completed and the theatre closed for good, Ayami walks the streets of the city with her former boss late into the night. Together they search for a mutual friend who has disappeared. The following day, at the request of that same friend, Ayami acts as a guide for a detective novelist visiting from abroad.

But in the inescapable, all-consuming heat of Seoul at the height of the summer, order gives way to chaos, the edges of reality start to fray, and the past intrudes on the present in increasingly disruptive ways.

Blisteringly original, Untold Night and Day is a high-wire feat of storytelling that explores the possibility of worlds beyond the one we see and feel – and shows why Bae Suah is considered one of the boldest voices in Korean literature today.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Magical Realism, Literary Fiction, Asian Literature, Asia, Adult

157 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 20, 2013

About the author

Bae Suah, one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary Korean authors, has published more than a dozen works and won several prestigious awards. She has also translated several books from the German, including works by W. G. Sebald, Franz Kafka, and Jenny Erpenbeck. Her first book to appear in English, Nowhere to be Found, was longlisted for a PEN Translation Prize and the Best Translated Book Award.

Reviews

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this novel, everybody is a ghost, a shadow, a dreamed-up contraption, and life unfolds in strange loops, enigmatic encounters, and unsettling atmospheric disturbances; so in a way, it's a twisted realist novel! :-) Bae Suah throws her readers into a maelstrom of shifting timelines and perspectives, thus creating a puzzling depiction of the title-giving night and day in which multiple existences cumulate at one point in time: "Ayami was her future self or her past self. And she was both, existing at the same time. (...) That was the secret of night and day existing simultaneously."

While this narrative concept is certainly philosophically complex, the story is easy to follow and not only deep, but also captivating: 27-year-old Ayami just lost her job at a small audio theatre in Seoul because the establishment is being closed down. A former actress, she is unsure what to do next, and we accompany her through one night and one day (which is more of an declared than an actual time span), in which, among other things, she spends time with her former boss and, after being asked by a severely ill friend of both of them, picks up a German writer from the airport. These activities might seem mundane, but it's the intriguing dialogue, the dynamics between the characters and, above all, the surreal narrative estrangement effects that turn the outcome into a haunting and disturbing experience.

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".

Art and artists play a vital role in Bae Suah's text as well: There is the protagonist who is an actress (or is she actually a poet?), the audio theatre, a performance film, a photography exhibition ("every photograph is a unique proof of identity, firmly declaring that human beings are ghosts"), an aspiring poet named Buha who sees "no contradiction whatsoever in the gulf between dreams and reality" and sells blue pills (hello, The Matrix), an old poet named Kim Cheol-sseok (yes, with two "s"), the severely ill German teacher Yeoni who lets her pupils read books, the German poet called Wolfi, which is usually short for Wolfgang, and many other references. There are multiple connections to Germany in the text - Bae Suah shares her time between South Korea and Germany. Another major motif in the text are the senses or lack thereof: While they usually help to grasp our surroundings, Bae Suah's characters are again and again deprived of sensual information (the audio theatre, reading lips, the blackout restaurant, Ayami's bad eyesight etc.), or if they aren't, the sensual information seems to further disorientate them (see the strange loops contained in the repetitions). Btw: Ayami means "beautiful color" in Japanese, and yes, you remember that correctly, she worked at an audio theatre. :-)

All in all, I was deeply impressed and also highly entertained by this unusual text, which reminded me of one of my favorite experimental writers, Jesse Ball (he would probably love the idea of a pickpocket who, instead of stealing, drops messages into people's pockets, and a protagonist stating "it occurred to me that I'm no more than an imaginary woman in your dream"). I'm glad that with the rise of Han Kang, Western readers found a new interest in South Korean literature, so I hope we will soon see more translations of exciting authors hailing from Korea.

You can learn more about the German translation Weiße Nacht in our latest podcast episode und in my interview with translator Sebastain Bring.

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hyper associative: like Dali in writing, an alive Hieronymus Bosch painting, a feverish dream in simmering hot Seoul.
Whenever I write a book I come up with several alternative versions. I write down as many as I can, read through them and choose the one I like the best.

This was something else and not at all what I expected based on the cover or the slim size of this book.
Alienating, what starts of as a story of a young Korean woman closing up at work evolves into a dreamlike, non-logically emerging story that is hard to reproduce and has many sentences repeated in different settings.

The translator notes alone already uncover a lot that goes on beneath the surface of this book, but while reading I had the feeling I was wading into a dream, full of heat, lack of real connection with others and lack of progress and prospects being available for a 28 year old without education. Bae Suah her method of storytelling seems circular instead of linear, with elements, images and sentences recurring in ever changing configurations.

The result is not a story to be really understood but a plethora on opportunities and interpretations of a meta story. If it sounds a bit vague, I think it is fair to say that Untold Night and Day in a sense is. For a book of only slightly above 150 pages its both very unique, dense and thoroughly interesting; if anything one could write a thesis on all the themes coming back in this work.
A real achievement and I am keen to read more of this singular author!

[emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

life is but a dream

(this comes to mind because this book explores the line between dream and reality, and not because i'm just thinking about children's songs)

(anyway)

there were moments this was truly interesting, but for the most part it was overambitious and seemed to find the huge number of symbols, motifs, themes, and Various Things Of Literary Significance it had saddled itself with unwieldy. it didn't nail the dismount, so to speak.

no landing-sticking here. y'know?

bottom line: fun potential, not so fun execution.

2.5

[Liong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ayami works in Seoul's audio theater...

Optical illusion... dreaming.... electrical sound...

A radio located somewhere inside the audio theater?

The radio turns itself on and then turns itself off again.

She can read the lips of someone you can't see by just hearing the phone.

She has a wealthy Aunt... lived in South East Asia. Aunt had a Malaysian maid.

A surreal, weird, confusing, and complicated fiction story.

I am a bit curious to review and recommend this book to you.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Just finish it," I chided myself. "It's only 160 pages, come on!" And thus I persisted.

Halfway through, last night, I drifted off into upright couch sitting deep sleep, where I had four intense nightmarish dreams in a row, and apparently moaned throughout (not in a good way.)

And I DO blame this book, which I can't make any sense of. I can't tell what's real or what's not. I can't understand how what seems imagined or historical in one scene is real in another. I don't understand how the characters seem to switch places and identities and also move between real and imagined (they also seem lost and confused.) I don't understand what is meant to be a deep connection to The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, a short novel of similar tone I read earlier this year and also didn't understand.

The translator Deborah Smith has obviously gone deep with this author and this feverish style; apparently the author is considered an outsider in Korean lit as well. I might point you first to her translator note, which is the last few pages, before reading the novel. I give the translation efforts 5 stars.

[lily · Rating 2 out of 5]

i’m just too dumb to understand this

[Léa · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW, this book is exactly what I hoped it would be and so much more..

A fast paced fever dream, intertwining a whirlwind of beautiful imagery, the magic of humanity and the most astonishing writing ever. I am absolutely in love with this book. Every single scene Bae Suah was portraying (even in such a dream like state), I could picture perfectly. Reminiscent of nostalgia, growing up and growing old, this story discussed so many themes in such a melancholy yet equally hopeful way.

I highly recommend this book to every one who adores ambiguity mixed with beautiful prose!

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

What starts as a quiet tale of a struggling middle class youth in Korea becomes a disorienting and surreal fable of identity, love, and art. At the intersection of Murakami and Kafka, Bae Suah occupies her own corner of contemporary literature. At times as light and charming as Banana Yoshimoto or Hiromi Kawakami, she also possesses highly literary powers comparable to Marquez. It is impossible to pin down exactly how she manages to convey rich detail, elegant economy, vivid characterization, and dream-like magic all at once.

Several recurrent images pervade the novel, which is organized like a piece of music. The refrains remind us of certain memories, but they also establish specific symbols. The effect of these interesting moments shed light on the passage of time in the world of the novel. It is clever in the extreme how Suah manages to weave together disparate occurrences in intriguing ways - whether it is an encounter in a theater or a magical bus ride through downtown, each wave of surrealism serves to construct a heartfelt nuance of youthful regret, love-lorn solitude, or the existential dilemma of a dreaming poet. Temperature crops up frequently in the book, enhancing the characters' skewed perspective with irony, hyperbole, and sympathy.

Bae Suah has said in interviews, that she did not choose Korea, as one does not choose one's name, but it is hers all the same. This uncertain commitment to national identity may be seen in some of her works dealing with outsiders, foreigners, and dispossessed Koreans. Here she describes South Korea as an island, surrounded on 3 sides by water, and on the fourth by an uncrossable border.

Transportation is another underlying theme of the novel - trains, planes, taxis and buses. A fair portion of the action takes place while the characters are standing still, but movement continues in their interactions, as they often recount journeys and far-removed events. I got the impression that the interstices of life, the introspective moments, intruded in unexpected ways, to punctuate the impressionistic qualities the author was going for. If you are not familiar with her style, the aimlessness or "random" aspect may trick you into believing this masterful novel is sloppy. In fact, it is a honed, enchanting, mesmeric experience, a dream of life, wherein emotion and memory collide.

I'm astounded by what this author has managed to do in the 4 books of hers I've read. The last one in English is called Recitation, and I will not be able to resist reading it for long.

Thanks go to the publisher who provided an ARC through Netgalley.

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Objects, matter itself, were softly disintegrating. All identity became ambiguous, semi-opaque.”

As the fickle creature that I am what drew me to Untold Night and Day was its cover. The first few pages intrigued me as they focus on Kim Ayami a former actor who now works at an audio theatre for the blind. The narrative that follows is rather metaphysical in nature, most of the discussions that occur within these pages are abstract and or relating to sensory experience, with, as the title suggests, special attention paid to night and day, darkness and lightness. This slim tome repeatedly obfuscates the line between dreams and reality, so that everything we read of is tinged by an air of surreality. At one point we read of a character who seems to be stalking Ayami before returning to her and a foreign poet nicknamed Wolfi. The novel was certainly disorienting, and in that, it evokes one of the story’s earlier episodes when Ayami meets with ‘the director’ in an exclusive ‘blackout restaurant’. We can’t really discern a story nor do we become familiar with the characters, and familiar settings and conversations are made unfamiliar. Alas, the discussion they have about art, poetry, performance, life, did not strike me as particularly profound or clever, in fact, they expressed rather tired ideas.
I can safely say that I did not get this novel. While I usually like surrealist narratives but here...well, I just did not care. If you are looking for an experimental read and you have a higher tolerance for novels that are confusing for the sake of being confusing, well, you should give this one a try.

❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀

[el · Rating 4 out of 5]

this reading experience evoked the same disquiet i felt the first time i watched the “rock bottom” episode of spongebob and……it was kind of everything.

gonna have to reread this 50 times before i can say anything more substantial than: wow.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

To read Untold Night and Day is to stand on shifting ground. This is a story that always operates according to dream logic, in which identities are malleable and the impossible becomes unremarkable.

We are introduced to Ayami on her last day of employment at an 'audio theatre', where recordings are played to the visually impaired. At first the scene appears mundane: Ayami worries about a radio that keeps turning itself back on, speaks to her boss, and ruminates on her next career move. However, it doesn't take long for the story's underlying strangeness to seep through. Scenes of Ayami inside the theatre, observing passers-by, again seem relatively ordinary until you realise she can hear every detail of conversations taking place outside, beyond the locked doors, across the street and inside cars. A passage about the heat of summer in the city spirals into an apocalyptic vision of burning streets and melting flesh. Ayami and her boss dine at a restaurant where everyone eats in pitch darkness.

There are motifs, too: a girl with a visual impairment wearing a stiff cotton hanbok and 'rough hemp sandals'; a woman pressing Ayami's wrist, as if taking her pulse; a desperate man with bloodshot eyes, among others. Sometimes features of these figures are transferred to the main characters, and sometimes they surface in strangers. Whole paragraphs are repeated in different contexts – several times, I was jolted by repetition, wondering momentarily whether I had accidentally turned the page backwards. As I read, I wondered whether these motifs were clues, adding up to some greater elucidation of Ayami's murky past. It would seem not. If there's any message to take away from this story, it's the idea that everything is constantly slipping away and remaking itself.

This city's hidden name is "secret". People end up losing one another before they know it. Everything disappears as quickly as it's put up. The same is true of memories. It can even happen that, if you take ten steps out of your door then turn and look back, the house you just left isn't there any more. And then you'll never find it again. It can happen with people, too. This city's hidden name is "secret".

At points, Untold Night and Day reminded me of Iain Reid's I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Hiromi Kawakami's Record of a Night Too Brief; while it shares with these novels a slippery, dreamlike quality, it's too distinctive to be truly comparable to anything else. As with the Kawakami book, the resolute weirdness sometimes gets a bit wearing, but the overall effect is pleasing. I finished it wanting to read more and know more about Ayami, yet also feeling satisfied with this odd snapshot of her life.

I received an advance review copy of Untold Night and Day from the publisher through Edelweiss.

TinyLetter

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The mysterious repeated statements enhance the sense of the surreal, the fantastical.

Untold Night and Day, translated by Deborah Smith, was originally published in Korean in 2013 as 알려지지 않은 밤과 하루 by 배수아 (Bae Suah).

This is the 7th book by 배수아 I have read (and the 9th translation by Deborah Smith, including 4 of novels by Han Kang) - see below for the list.

The first section of the novel is narrated from the perspective of Ayami (아야미), a young (or is she?) women a wannabe actress (or did she act?) working in a rather unusual audio theatre. Her name itself is strange - not a standard Korean name - but rather taken from the spirit-teacher/dream-wife of a Goldi shaman from Siberia (see https://allaboutheaven.org/observatio... and https://tischenko-gallery.com/siberia/).

While working in the theatre she has an oddly emotional encounter with a man standing on the other side of the glass doors:

아야미는 얼어붙었다. 그녀의 두 손이 자신도 모르게 유리문 저편, 남자의 손을 향해서 올라갔다. 그들의 손이 겹쳐졌다. 당황스러운 떨림이 아야미의 심장을 관통하고 지나갔다. 그녀는 매우 강렬하면서도 정체불명인 어떤 감정에 사로잡히는 자신의 육체를 느꼈다. 의지와 의식을 넘어서는 감정.
나는 감정이다, 하고 그녀 안의 무엇인가가 그녀를 대신하여 속삭이는 것이 들렸다. 나는 오직 감정이다.
무슨 일인가요, 하고 아야미는 입술을 움직여서, 하지만 목소리를 입 밖에 내지는 않으면서 말했다.

Ayami froze. Unconsciously, she inched her hands up to the point where her outstretched palms mirrored those on the other side of the glass. A tremor shuddered through Ayami’s heart. She felt her body being seized by a shockingly intense emotion, one she couldn’t identify. An emotion surpassing will and consciousness.

I am emotion, she heard something inside her whisper, speaking in her stead. I am nothing but emotion.

What’s the matter? Ayami’s lips moved to form the words, but no sound came from her mouth.

The 2nd section is narrated from the perspective of Buha (부하), who is obsessed with poetry, and one particular poet in particular, except he has no desire to read or write it:

부하는 시를 읽지도, 쓰지도 않았지만 가끔 그림을 그렸다. 그의 어머니는 화가였다. 아버지는 문화부에서 근무했던 공무원으로, 어머니보다 나이가 열다섯 살이나 많았으며 겉과 속이 모두 고루하고 보수적인 사람이었다. 화제가 궁한 오후, 어머니는 아이였던 그에게 냉소적으로 털어놓곤 했다. “화가에게 정말로 필요한 건 남편이 아니라 스폰서란다.”

Though Buha neither read nor wrote poetry, he did sometimes draw. His mother had been an artist. His father, a civil servant, had retired from the Ministry of Culture, and was around fifteen years older than his mother. He was a bigot and conservative in thinking and appearance. On afternoons where she had been starved for conversation Buha's mother would say to her young son: 'What an artist really needs is not a husband but a sponsor.'

But - as the opening quote suggests - the story becomes increasingly surreal, with certain images, objects and phrases reoccuring, and characters swapping identities and changing histories.

Except that opening quote isn't about this novel at all, but rather a key text within the novel, the cult novel from Iran The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, who, like Bae Suah, translated Kafka into his native language.

Hedayat was an Iranian writer, and The Blind Owl is his major work. The book is highly regarded, and is a pessimistic, atmospheric work filled with dreams, visions and agonies. In particular, the mysterious repeated statements enhance the sense of the surreal, the fantastical.

The third section has a German writer (of poetry? of detective novels?) coming to Korea, with Ayami acting as his interpreter - and the repeated images and the unstable characters spiral further. As Ayami tells her interpretee at one point: Don’t speak so quickly. Don’t say so many things all at once, and don’t use so much irony. Otherwise I won’t understand a word.

But then she herself is given to statements such as: Around this time of year I dream of clutching an enormous parrot to my chest and crawling into a non-existent bathtub brimming with cold water.

One of the most strikingly different writers around - recommended and one I hope to see feature on the MBI.

배수아 translations into English I've read, in

1995: 푸른 사과가 있는 국도 title story translated as Highway with Green Apples by Sora Kim-Russell: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

1998: 철수 (Cheolsu) by 배수아 translated as Nowhere to be Found by Sora Kim-Russell: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

2003: 에세이스트의 책상 (literally: Essayist's Desk) translated by Deborah Smith as A Greater Music: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

2010: 올빼미의 없음 (The Owl's Absence) translated as North Station by Deborah Smith: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

2011: 서울의 낮은 언덕들 (The Low Hills of Seoul) translated as Recitation by Deborah Smith: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

2013: 알려지지 않은 밤과 하루 translated as Untold Day and Night by Deborah Smith
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

2016: 밀레나 밀레나 황홀한 title story translated as Milena, Milena, Ecstatic by Deborah Smith: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Kate♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5stars

On paper this should have been a favorite book ever - absolutely surreal, magical realism, where the lines between reality and fiction are completely blurred. I loved how strange this got, and how lost I felt, but too much of the time I felt bored. This book is only 150 pages, and too much of it was spent talking about things that really didn't matter. I'd say a solid 80% of this novel is dialogue, and I've discovered I simply don't like that in novels - if it's going to just be dialogue with a few scenes with actual plot happening, just make it a play instead.

This is very unique and I definitely think a lot of people will like it - especially if you like the other Korean author Han Kang - but for some reason, it just didn't hit the mark for me, which is very disappointing as I was expecting this to be a new 5 star all time fave book. But, it was just fine for me.

[Mariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

No sé que acabo de leer pero LO AMÉ. Es un libro que definitivamente no es para todo mundo: profundamente onírico, desconcertante, circular, poético y misterioso. La historia va cobrando un poco de sentido a través de breves flashazos, el lector está armando un rompecabezas en el que faltan piezas (¿O no?). No hay manera de describirlo pero creo que es de esas lecturas que amas u odias, no hay punto medio. Las notas sobre la traducción que incluye Deborah Smith contienen esta frase que se traduce/parafrasea más o menos así: "este libro es simultáneamente una novela detectivesca y un sueño poético y surrealista. Está habitado tanto por personajes abstractos y misteriosos que se mezclan y funden uno con otro, como por cuerpos que se arrugan, se infectan, escurren sangre menstrual." Me parece que eso captura la esencia de esta breve pero contundente historia. La voy a volver a leer.

[spillingthematcha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Przepełniona oniryzmem. Ciekawa lektura.

[fatma · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Hold on to my arm. This city's hidden name is 'secret.' People end up losing one another before they know it. Everything disappears as quickly as it's put up. The same is true of memories. It can even happen that, if you take ten steps out of your door and then turn and look back, the house you just left isn't there any more. And then you'll never find it again. It can happen with people, too."

Untold Night and Day is like a hall of mirrors: motifs are repeated to distortion, mutating as they appear in different contexts with shifting meanings, so much so that as in a hall of mirrors, it becomes difficult to extricate the tangible from its reflection. Boundaries are porous in the novel, events bleeding into each other and characters moving in and out of each other's narratives. Needless to say, this is a story that is more about raising questions than supplying answers. At 150 pages, it's a slim novel, but it's one that is so dense with narrative convolutions that it definitely demands your attention to keep up with even a little bit of its plot.

Some adjectives to describe this book: strange, absurd, bizarre, surreal. Suah's brand of surrealism is defined by her preoccupation with sensory detail: the almost suffocating heat of Seoul in the summer, the texture of a starched fabric, the instinctive panic that comes with being in absolute darkness. Suah quite literally sets the stage for this kind of preoccupation with one of her opening paragraphs:

"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 light and form, but sound, too."

That's exactly it: matter seems to disintegrate in this novel, like putty in Suah's hands. And because of this you end up with a narrative that feels less linear and more circular.

All of this is to say, I enjoyed this novel. I can appreciate that it might not be for everyone, especially those who tend towards more concrete plots, but despite its bizarreness I was along for whatever ride Bae Suah took me on. Sometimes you encounter stories you don't understand, know that you don't understand them, and yet still enjoy them; Untold Night and Day is one of those stories.

Thank you so much to ABRAMS Books for sending me an advanced copy of this in exchange for an honest review!

[India McLeod Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book is like experiencing a fever dream. I devoured it in one sitting while in a constant state of awe. Suah writes with the logic of dreams as characters, time and senses are all disorientated. We move from one scene to another in a manner that makes sense only in the dream-like nature of the book.

I adored this completely unique novel, its beautiful writing and the hypnotic journey it took me on.

[Kamila Kunda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bae Suah likes to challenge readers used to more conventional plot lines and character development. In “Untold Night and Day” identities are blurred, chronology is warped, time and space are stretched and exist in parallel to others.

It’s a muggy summer in Seoul. Ayami, the newly unemployed administrator of an audio theatre for the blind which just closed down, is spending the day and night in an eerie suspension between the past, present and future. Her name means “the spirit that enters the shaman’s body and communicates matters of the other world” and she seems to pick up sensory stimuli which other people do not even notice. She attends German lessons with Yeoni, during which they read the German translation of Sadegh Hedayat’s cult Iranian novel from 1936 “The Blind Owl”. But Yeoni disappears - has she ever existed? - and Ayami finds herself in the reality that keeps resembling a déjà-vu experience.

Certain aspects of Hedayat’s novel and even his life are mirrored in Suah’s oneiric, inventive story. The use of language is Suah’s forte and I wish I could read this novel in Korean. There are descriptions that recur over and over again, sometimes in a slightly different wording, and evoke the sensation of circularity of history and our experiences. The characters echo each other and can be simultaneously several incarnations. Reminiscences of the turbulent past: blackouts, curfews, the feeling of oppression, cast a shadow on the day and night and while the novel is Korean, in that respect it could also reflect Polish relationship with the not-so-distant past.

“Untold Night and Day” is a beautiful, mysterious, multi-dimensional novel, bringing to mind films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and giving me an impression of stepping into someone’s otherworldly dream, from which I don’t want to wake up. Read it and become hypnotised.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ein mehr als solider surrealer Roman aus Südkorea. Das Buch fängt großartig an, verwebt seltsame Figuren in weirde Situationen und Szenen. Es springt etwas wild zwischen verschiedenen Zeiten, um mehr Hintergründe zu erzählen, die Rahmengeschichte um Ayami betrifft jedoch nur einen Tag und eine Nacht.
Das Seltsame und Unbehagliche schleicht sich eigentlich von Beginn an in den Text. Es beginnt teilweise recht harmlos und wechselt plötzlich in unangenehme Stimmungen über, die für alle Figuren fremd wirken müssen.
Mit den Konzepten von Traum& Realität, Sehen & Nichtsehen (stattdessen nur Hören), Licht/Hitze & Schatten/Dunkelheit wird sehr gelungen hantiert.
Nichtsdestotrotz ist das Ende eher unbefriedigend. Vielleicht darf man hier einfach nichts gewohntes und normales erwarten. Aber selbst ein Text von Kafka kommt mir dagegen sehr normal vor. ;)

[Floor tussendeboeken · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was quite a weird one to read. Though when I read the translator's note at the end, it all made more sense to me.

[Arbuz Dumbledore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niesamowite, wyjątkowe przeżycie. Coś zupełnie innego, onirycznego, niepokojącego. Wspaniała zagadka bez rozwiązania. Bardzo mi się podobała, choć oczywiście nie wszystko zrozumiałam. Myślę, że przeczytam ją jeszcze raz, żeby połączyć wszystkie możliwe kropki. Ale faktem jest to, że próba zrozumienia tej książki wplątuje w jeszcze większy chaos.

[Kansas · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2025...

"¿Qué es lo que se está desvaneciendo?
- No sé cómo explicarlo. ¿El sueño de alguien que está soñando con nosotros?"


Ya conté en mi crónica de “En ninguna parte” que me había recordado mucho a David Lynch, Bae Suah tiene ese algo onírico, lo que en inglés se califica como dreamlike, y que aquí en esta novela se hace mucho más evidente. Toda la novela se puede decir que es como si fuera el sueño de alguien que está soñando con Ayami y el resto de los personajes. Es una novela que me ha transportado directamente a Mulholland Drive porque prácticamente no hay diferencia entre sueño y realidad, o se podría decir que no sabemos en qué momento de la historia la realidad se convierte en sueño porque en esta novela, la misma Ayami puede que viva en una especie de realidad o de sueño paralelo en la mente de alguien. No sé bien, cuando acabé esta novela de apenas 120 páginas sentí la necesidad de volverla a empezar para comprobar esto mismo, ¿dónde estaría exactamente el punto en el que la realidad se desvanece y se convierte en un sueño tal como le ocurría al personaje de Naomi Watts en Mulholland Drive? "Nunca percibió la realidad y los sueños como dos elementos contradictorios. (Si no, ¿por qué deberíamos distinguir llamando sueño a los sueños,y realidad a la realidad?)." En este aspecto, “En ninguna parte” aunque tenía partes muy lynchianas, sobre todo aquellas en las que Seúl se convierte una ciudad fantasmgórica, es una novela mucho más conectada a la realidad que ésta que me ocupa. Aquí la atemporalidad está continuamente presente, sobre todo asentada en la no linealidad del tiempo, o casi se puede decir que el tiempo no existe: por esas cuatro secciones en las que está dividida la novela en la que acaba desvaneciéndose la realidad en un momento dado y hay como una entrada de Ayami en otra realidad, (al estilo de la Alicia de Lewis Carrol), o quizás pase a ser la protagonista del sueño de alguien.


“La joven Ayami caminaba por la calle cuando descubrió una pequeña piedra azul y la cogió, destapando la boca de un profundo agujero. (Alguien dijo una vez que aquel agujero era en realidad la otra cara de un espejo que conducía a otro mundo). Al otro lado del oscuro agujero vivía otra Ayami en otro mundo. [...] Ese era el secreto de la existencia simultánea de la noche y el día. Ayami lo descubrió con un solo gesto. Lo recordaba con más claridad que a ella misma, no recordaba nada más.”


En “La noche y el día de Ayami” sí que hay una historia pero esta historia conectada con la realidad llegado un punto se difumina y comienza una narrativa que simula un sueño en el sentido de que cuando soñamos, la realidad parece que deja de tener sentido, ocurren hechos que apenas podremos recordar y sin embargo, las impresiones o las sensaciones son las que perduran. Y al igual que ocurría en En ninguna parte, hay repeticiones, momentos recurrentes que se narran varias veces, con alguna variación, y estos momentos están firmemente conectados a apagones intermitentes que sufre la ciudad y que lo deja todo a oscuras, como en una especie de desconexión o desvanecimiento de la realidad, y esto es lo que convierte esta historia en un relato medio sonámbulo o fantasmagórico, en las que las formas humanas una vez a oscuras, vuelven a ser reconocidos casi como fantasmas, o como figuras desconectadas de la realidad. Las repeticiones de escenas, o de conversaciones, dejan un poso de irrealidad durante toda la novela. La profesora de alemán que desaparece misteriosamente y que igual vuelve a aparecer como un fantasma bajo otro nombre, no sabemos bien, pero es cierto que Bae Suah envuelve su narración en una atmósfera totalmente lynchiana: "En aquella enorme ciudad cuadriculada daba la casualidad de que todos sus habitantes dormían al mismo tiempo. Desconocen el paradero de la desconocida. El nombre de aquella ciudad: Secreto. Ventanas invisibles en estado de contemplación."


"-¿Sabes? De madrugada, en el aeropuerto, me sorprendió ver el mundo desaparecer ante mis ojos. La sala de llegadas, siempre tan iluminada, desapareció sin más. Sin previo aviso. Como la puerta de llegada, como tú. No eran los objetos sino mis propios ojos los que parecían haberse desvanecido. Entonces pestañeé, y aparecieron formas en la oscuridad. Formas insustanciales. Fantasmas deslizándose muy, muy lento. El alma de las cosas que perdura en la tierra después de la muerte.
[...]
Puede que ese apagón general sea un síntoma de la edad, como la pérdida de memoria. Una señal de desvanecimiento."


La protagonista de esta novela, y tal como su titulo indica, es Ayami, una empleada de un audioteatro para ciegos que está a punto de cerrar. Ayamí tiene veintiocho años es una aspirante a actriz que solo parece haber actuado en una única producción y acaba trabajando en este audioteatro casi como empleada única después de haber ejercido otros trabajos para ganarse la vida. Cuando comienza la historia, es el último día antes del cierre, y a partir de aquí hay una atmósfera de incertidumbre por el futuro. En esta última noche Ayami se dedica a recorrer la ciudad con su jefe, las conversaciones de ambos en torno al encargo que le ha hecho la profesora de alemán desaparecida para que se ocupe de un poeta que llegará al día siguiente, crearán una narrativa a caballo entre lo real y un surrealismo tirando a espiritual. La realidad en la que viven esta noche en Seúl no parece ceñirse a ninguna regla y el tiempo simula ir transformándose y moldeándose en otra realidad paralela. Ayami incluso se confundirá con otros personajes femeninos que salen a la luz. La llegada al aeropuerto del poeta en medio del apagón dónde ambos se reconocen sin verse, también parece producto de un sueño. Un momento de oscuridad en el aeropuerto que vuelve a repetirse pero quizás en otra realidad alternativa, o si era un sueño, vuelve a repetirse casi al final en una escena con su jefe. ¿Es la realidad tan dura, tan incierta, tan oscura en sí misma, que quizás Bae Suah está invirtiendo los tiempos y creando realidades paralelas que responden a un respiro para sus personajes?


"- Lo que no logro entender es cómo nos reconocimos en medio de la oscuridad.
- Cruzaste la puerta y viniste directo hacia mi como si ya me conocieras."


Realmente he acabado la novela sin saber realmente qué ha sido realidad y qué sueño o fantasía paralela, porque incluso este teatro (un lugar donde uno va y se sienta en un sofá a escuchar un audio de una obra de teatro, de forma similar a como se va al cine a ver una película) donde trabaja Ayami parece un lugar fuera de este mundo. Al igual que le ocurría al personaje femenino de “En ninguna parte”, Ayami está a la búsqueda de algo y quizás Bae Suah nos esté narrando el viaje de su mente por agarrarse a algo firme. Hay algo muy misterioso y atmosférico en el estilo de Bae Suah directamente relacionado además con el entorno físico,, con el paisaje en este caso Seúl, una ciudad entre fantasmal y distópica, que podría ser cualquier otra ciudad del mundo, en la que la alienación y el aislamiento obliga a sus habitantes a una desesperada búsqueda de conexión, y yo diría que incluso Bae Suah está hablando de la creación artística porque aquí muchos personajes se dedican al arte, pero todos han fracasado, todos tienen miedo, ninguno es capaz de ver con claridad el futuro.


“La oscuridad de la noche y de los apagones intermitentes que sufría la ciudad hacían relucir el negro de la pantalla apagada, lisa como la superficie de una bandeja de plástico y sin contenido alguno. De repente se estremeció igual que un cadáver sometido a descargas eléctricas. Apareció una imagen, pero antes llegó la frecuencia de una radio.

Durante el día. Temperaturas de Treinta. Y nueve. Grados. Ausencia. De Viento. Despejado. Riesgo de incendios. Treinta. Grados. Durante el día. Se esperan. Fenómenos. De espejismos. En la ciudad. El asfalto. Y los neumáticos. Ausencia. De viento. Despejado. Riesgo de Incendios. Ausencia. De color. En el cielo. Ausencia. A Yeoni, Yeoni…"


Durante toda la novela se habla de la misteriosa mujer poeta, hay un personaje que se refiere a ella continuamente, en una búsqueda incesante "No quería que sintiese su presencia y se girase, no quería que lo viera. No quería que lo conociese. Por eso se detuvo allí. La sombra de la mujer poeta fue absorbida por la oscuridad abismal" y quizás esta mujer poeta sea la misma Ayami, no lo sé, realmente tampoco me interesa demasiado desentrañar los misterios con que Bae Suah envuelve su novela, porque lo que de verdad perdura son las sensaciones, la atmósfera de desconexión de la realidad en la que se mueven sus personajes. Con su narrativa la autora nos está diciendo que en el mundo en el que vivimos el orden se ha desvanecido y que igual la auténtica realidad pueda estar en el sueño que nos construimos en nuestra mente .


“Avanzamos, sin mirar atrás, dejando que nuestro cuerpo quede imbuido en su energía. Fascinados. Cautivos. Algo envuelve nuestros cuerpos, nuestras almas. Y dejamos de ser nosotros. Nos convertimos en uno solo con el secreto ajeno. El miedo nos oprime el pecho, sofoca la respiración.
Pero es una fascinación y un placer incomparables. Poseídos, no podemos dejar de acercarnos al tabú.”

♫♫♫ Inner City Blues - Marvin Gaye ♫♫♫

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bizarre and slippery fever dream of a novel. Not for me!

[Inderjit Sanghera · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

All of this is overlaid with sparse, yet beautiful, prose: “Every time the city dwellers fell asleep their bodies became cruelly soaked in sweat, like tinder doused with lighter fluid. They burned without flames through the long hours of the night.” The imagery which Ayami evokes is one of a deeply fractured mind, one fraying on the edges of reality, one which renders the world around it as a surreal dreamscape populated with nonchalant poets and opalescent nights, of restaurants where the diners are forced to eat in darkness and where the reader’s senses are heightened, one where the characters seem aware that they are nothing but figments in the imagination of the writer and millions of readers.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very little fiction captures the utterly disorientating atemporal feeling that many dreams have. It's mostly experienced in retrospect after you wake up, when trying to sort dream-images into a sequence or narrative of some kind in search of meaning. 'Untold Night and Day' manages to evoke just this feeling with recurring images, sentences, and events. Adding to the disorientation is the oppressive humid heat, which Suah evokes unpleasantly viscerally. The narrative covers a day and night, during which the two protagonists repeatedly encounter each other and themselves in unsettling yet ostensibly mundane contexts. Their identities seem fractured and confused. The setting is Seoul, the atmosphere of which emerges through little details. I particularly liked the shipping forecast as a recurring motif:

Today's. Temperature. Forty. Degrees. Celsius. No wind. No cloud. Danger. Of burning. Forty. Degrees. Absence. Of wind. Absence. Of cloud. Daytime. City. Mirage. Scheduled. To appear. Absence. Of wind. Absence. Of cloud. Absence. Of colour. In the sky.

What a haunting novella. I don't quite know what to make of it, but was impressed by how distinctively unsettling I found the reading experience. The translator's note has some fascinating cultural and historical context for Suah's writing (and was sensibly placed at the end of the book).

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deborah Smith again translates with florid language, evoking a surreal landscape where phrases echo word for word throughout the novel. Stories overlap and intersect. Episodes overlay each other as if written on diaphanous paper filling out and filling in the larger narrative as each page is laid on top of the other.

You have to be in the mood for this. It's so contemplatively weird, intent on pushing you off balance and messing with your equilibrium. A hazy fever dream in the liminal space between waking and sleep. Honestly, how many more cliches can I jot down here. I enjoyed the experience, I'm just ill equipped to really talk about it without resorting to all this folderol.

[Stacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cool book. I will point you to Henk's review which is what spurred me to read it in the first place.

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt like a long fever dream that left me feeling drowsy and exhausted. Moments in the novel gets repeated a lot – but each time it comes out slightly different, distorted even. Almost like a David Lynch film (I’m not that big of a fan of Lynch). My favourite parts of the novel are mostly the ones related to the ‘heat-wave’ – the vivid descriptions of muggy, inner city living and dread. The whole time I was reading this, I kept wondering if my lack of commitment to the storyline/plot is due to how I feel about the translator. I think she’s a great translator, but her style and writing is just not the kind of work/writing that I like.

“Air hotter than the heat of midsummer solidified into transparent bullets, penetrating one heart after the other, travelling between them with excruciating slowness. At every moment, the crystallisation of invisible wax ruptured skin and perforated flesh. Smouldering hunks of flesh. Mucous membranes ragged with burns. Breathing was a train headed for disaster. Every time the city dwellers fell asleep their bodies became cruelly soaked in sweat, like tinder doused with lighter fluid. They burned without flames through the long hours of the night.”

The characterisation is a bit bizarre – they sort of overlap one another. It’s hard to tell who is who. The four main characters are Ayami, Buha, Wolfi, and Yeoni. But is Buha and Wolfi the same person; is Yeoni and Ayami – ? I suppose each character is central to each quarter of the book, but in the end it’s always Ayami leading the way. I enjoyed the two sub-plots in the novel more than the main. First one being the story about the murder/death of the woman in the small town; and the second being anything that revolves around the old poet, Kim Cheol-Sseok. Unlike Murakami’s books, where one is able to tell quite clearly when or where the ‘magic’ happens, Suah’s plot is a bit of all-over-the-place. Either that, or I’ve missed out something somewhere, so I’m just left with this lingering sense of disorientation/confusion.

“People lose one another before they know it. Everything disappears as quickly as it’s put up. The same is true of memories. It can happen that you take ten steps out of your door then turn and look back, and the house you just left isn’t there any more. And then you’ll never find it again. It can happen with people, too.”

The excerpt above sums up how I feel about this novel. I want to love it more, but I feel a bit lost – like that Sharon van Etten’s song, I Love You But I’m Lost. Regardless, I was able to get to the end of the book, so it wasn’t a bad experience. Yet I can’t help but think that I’d have a much better experience if it had been translated by a different translator. I enjoyed Suah’s other book a lot more, Nowhere to Be Found which was brilliantly translated by Sora Kim-Russell. I doubt I’ll read any other books by Suah because the rest that I’ve not read are all translated by Deborah Smith. It might work wonderfully for other readers, but unfortunately for me the reading experience was not that great.

“Translation is always happening, though we don’t always notice it. What language do Wolfi and Ayami speak? The ‘original’ is already a translation. And the idea of translation pervades the whole.” – Translator’s Notes

“When is one book written by more than one person? When are two books both the same and different? Is translation a mind-bending paradox, a run-of-the-mill banality, or a joke that misses the mark? Perhaps all three – simultaneously.” – Translator’s Notes

Even though I didn't like Smith’s translations, I do enjoy her notes/essay. She wrote an interesting piece at the end of the book which reveals a lot of her ideas and thoughts as she translated Suah’s novel. She’s clearly a brilliant and experienced translator, but I just – can’t vibe with (her work). I wish I did; I truly do.

“Just then, when the shop lights went off, it occurred to me that I’m no more than an imaginary woman in your dream.’
‘If that’s the case, I don’t want to wake up.’
‘If the one who’s dreaming me is not an unknowable god but you yourself. If the dream is the product of your imagination.’
‘Let’s drink to the fact that we’re the products of each other’s imagination.”

[Laubythesea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Si tuviera que comparar la experiencia de leer ‘La noche y el día de Ayami’ con algo sería cómo yo me imagino que debe sentirse estar caminando tranquilamente y de pronto sentir que estas pisando arenas movedizas. Lo que creías que te sostenía desaparece, se vuelve endeble, inseguro, pero… por suerte, tienes ramas a las que agarrarte y, con algo de esfuerzo, consigues salir ilesa y contar lo que te ha pasado como algo divertido. 
 
Todo empieza con Ayami, una joven a la que acompañamos en sus últimas jornadas de trabajo en un teatro sonoro, antes de que este cierre. Esa noche, tras un suceso algo desconcertante, cenará con su jefe y luego se dispondrá a recoger del aeropuerto a un escritor de novela policiaca para hacerle un favor a su profesora de alemán, que, por cierto, ha desaparecido.
 
La narración tiene algo que desde el principio te hace estar alerta, quizá sea la sensación de desconcierto que consigue crear la autora al no dejar al lector ubicarse del todo. Te traslada a un Seúl caluroso, incómodo, húmedo, angustiante y cambiante, donde poco a poco vas detectando sucesos extraños, cosas que no encajan, para darte cuenta de que estás ante un puzzle del que tienes muy pocas piezas. La autora juega muy bien con las repeticiones para marcarte un camino que no siempre podrás ver.
 
Sin entrar a deciros mi interpretación final, si puedo adelantaros que cuaderno en mano, harás croquis para intentar dilucidar quién es quién, las diferentes líneas temporales, separar la realidad del sueño, la luz de la oscuridad, la verdad de lo escrito, lo vivo de lo muerto. Un libro donde los sentidos y la privación de los mismos, tendrá mucha importancia, al igual que la creación de elementos desconcertantes como un carterista que, en realidad, mete algo en tu bolsillo.
 
Un libro lleno de simbolismo, perspectivas diferentes, personajes que transitan la realidad, pero no la misma (o si), que te hacen sentir como si estuvieras en una sala llena de espejos distorsionados, donde ves la misma imagen, pero distinta en cada lugar. Todo al mismo tiempo. De una forma poco convencional habla de arte, identidad, actualidad de Corea y del proceso de escritura entre otras mil cosas.
 
Una novela que crea todo un universo (¿o multiverso?) en menos de 120 páginas, que te gustará si disfrutas de las historias abiertas a diferentes interpretaciones, con toques oníricos y/o surrealistas. Yo he disfrutado como una enana con la sensación de paranoia que esta historia me ha generado, la necesidad imperiosa de comprender, de atar cabos. Corta pero intensa, densa a ratos, apasionante siempre.
 
Un libro que sin duda dialoga con ‘La lechuza ciega’ de Sadeq Hedayat (Siruela), mencionada una y otra vez en la novela. Iré a por ella en cuanto pueda.
 
No es un libro que vaya a recomendar a todo el mundo, pero si este es tu rollo, estoy segura de que ya lo habrás apuntado en tu lista de pendientes y ¡no te vas a arrepentir!

[Mina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ayami beendet ihren letzten Tag in Seouls Audiotheater und wir begleiten sie traumgleich eine Nacht und einen Tag lang, zunächst ins Dunkelrestaurant mit ihrem Chef, dann in die Wohnung ihrer Freundin und Deutschlehrerin Yeoni, die verschwunden zu sein scheint. Von ihr hat Ayami den Auftrag erhalten, den deutschen Dichter Wolfi vom Flughafen abzuholen und ihm während seines Aufenthaltes in Südkorea zu assistieren.

Während die Handlung eher behäbig voranschreitet, bringt Bae Suah durch ihre außergewöhnliche Erzählweise in “Weiße Nacht” Zeit und Raum zum Bröckeln. Zeitebenen schieben sich übereinander und Situationen, sogar wortwörtliche Beschreibungen, kehren immer wieder, loop für loop für loop.. Mir drängte sich der Eindruck auf, Ayami sei nur eine Idee, der fluide Entwurf einer Person, vielleicht aus der Feder von Wolfi (dafür gibt es auch Andeutungen im Text). Damit verbunden werden im Leser Fragen nach Realität und Traum aufgeworfen und der Wunsch nach Halt und Stabilität bei all der Durchlässigkeit.

Auch Trauer spielt eine Rolle, verbunden mit einem Bus, der nur mit ein paar Menschen besetzt durch die Nacht rast. Vielleicht sitzen auch wir als Leser nur in einem rasanten Trauerbus und werden durch die Nacht geschleudert, während uns der Boden unter den Füßen weggezogen wird. Die Autorin platziert hier viele surreale, enigmatische Versatzstücke und überlässt es uns, sie einzusammeln und zu etwas Sinnhaften zusammenzufügen.

Nachdem ich das Hörbuch beendet hatte, hätte ich das Buch gerne noch physisch gelesen, um mehr zu erkennen, vergleichen und deuten zu können. Ich bekam jedoch auch so den Eindruck einer klugen und stimmungsvoll erzählten Geschichte, die mir als wunderbar ungewöhnlich im Gedächtnis bleibt.