Book Review: Midnight Timetable

   By Bora Chung

 Translator: Anton Hur

• Pub Date: 2025

• Genre: A novel in ghost stories  

• Where I bought this book: Midtown Scholar, Harrisburg, Penn. 

• Why I bought this book: Because the author is Bora Chung, who is phenomenal

• Bookmark used: Whatever was handy

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    This is either a novel disguised as a book of short stories, or a book of short stories disguised as a novel. Or it's both. Any of those are fine descriptions for this work of art.

    I'm at the point now that any book with Bora Chung's name on it is worth buying; as soon as I saw this one on the bookstore table I grabbed it. She is, without a doubt, one of the best writers in Korean, and her works translate easily into English. (I'm guessing at the actual ease of translation. But the outcome proves my point.)

    She is inventive, descriptive, perceptive. She is a polymath -- a writer, a teacher, and a translator with degrees in Russian studies and Slavic literature. 

    Her fiction deals with science, technology, the (perhaps dystopic) future, time and space. Her characters are people struggling to deal with the rapid, sometimes distorted, often random changes they cope (or not) with daily.  

    Her writing is breathtaking and pointed. Look at the way she described the challenges that Chan, a gay man, faced growing up in a fanatical religious household.

The religion they zealously adhered to had strict rules governing the manner in which people should exist, and they liked to perpetuate discrimination and hate according to their arbitrary tenets. Chan, torn between the way he was born and the religious tenets that condemned him, discussed his dilemma with a leader of his religion. This leader violated every ethical and legal principle in the books by swiftly conveying the contents of this discussion to Chan's parents. Chan's parents, on the leader's recommendation, used their authority over their minor to force the child to go to "ex-gay" conditioning. But sexual orientation not being a disease, and a person becoming conditioned to "ex" their sexuality also not being a feasible proposition, the treatment served only to torture him rather than change him.

    The stories are about people who work at the Institute, which is described only as a research organization. The people are mostly security, who go around checking the many doors in many corridors. The are told not to go inside any room, or talk to anyone they meet, or listen to anything they may hear.

    Each story is a discussion with their sunbae, or a tale told by or about an employee. They overlap. They build on each other. They explain -- to a point -- a common theme. Many of the tales are from Korean folklore, mythology, or spirituality.

    In her afterword, Chung says they are ghost stories, At the end of the book, she explains her love of such stories, and how the best part is when the scary ghost appears. She also explain how she found her title.

I moved to Pohang in 2021, when the pandemic still raged. Pohang Bus Terminal has a separate ticket window for night buses. Since it's a port city Pohang has always had an influx of foreigners, which means the bus terminal has many signs in English. The night bus schedule that hangs over the night bus ticket window, for example, helpfully has the English words midnight timetable emblazoned on it. These two words in juxtaposition felt very poetic and mysterious to me, and I've always wanted to use them in a story.