The Invisible Hotel Hardcover by Yeji Y. Ham

Product Details

• Publisher: Bond Street Books (2024-03-05)
• Language: English
• Pages: 320
• ISBN-13: 9780385698054
• Weight: 425.25 grams
• Dimensions: 21.67 x 14.63 x 2.64 cm

A work of literary horror in the gothic tradition, The Invisible Hotel is a startling, speculative tale of political and ideological adolescence in the long afterlife of the Korean War.

Yewon dreams of a hotel. In the hotel, there are infinite keys to infinite rooms—and a quiet terror she is desperate to escape. When Yewon wakes, she sees her life: a young woman, out of her job at a convenience store, trapped in the tiny South Korean village of her birth, watching her mother wash the bones of their ancestors in their decrepit bathtub. Every house has them, these rotting and fragmented bones, reminders of what they have all lost to a war that never seems to end. Yewon and her siblings were born in this bathtub—and every year women give birth to new babies in the bathtub.  

Now, Yewon’s brother is stationed near the North Korean border, her sister has just undergone a life-changing tragedy, and her mother is constantly worried, her health declining. In crisis and in stasis, Yewon’s dreams of the decrepit hotel lead her to an unsettling truth about her country’s collective heritage.

Recalling international trailblazers like Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, The Invisible Hotel marks the arrival of a singular new voice with a sharp social acumen.

About the Author

YEJI Y. HAM is a Korean Canadian writer. She received her B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University. At Brown, she completed a short story collection titled Doraesol, and a part of the manuscript was awarded the Frances Mason Harris' 26 Prizes in Fiction. Her works have appeared in Shorts (Platypus Press), Wilderness Journal, The Rivet Journal, The Broome Street Review and No Tokens Journal.