This traumatic history appears obliquely; in the existential preoccupations of the novel and as its ghostly population, “flying slowly, too late. Souls left behind on Earth even after the death of matter.” Bae’s fantastical fiction explores the edges of knowledge, identity and perception to suggest that a story is only as fixed as the world around it. My thoughts are all over the place right now, so it’s difficult to remember. The thing is, though, I’ve studied lip-reading, so I could make a good guess at what he was saying. Might he be angry because we didn’t let him join our German lessons?’

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.

I didn’t mishear. He was right there on the other side of the glass door. I didn’t open it, of course. What kind of person jokes about killing someone?’ Someone I know will be arriving at the airport very early in the morning. Could you go and meet them? It’s their first time in Korea.’ The German-language teacher paused, then, with a sudden earnest intensity, said, ‘There’s no one else I can ask, Blind Owl.’ I’m not so young. And I’m certainly not beautiful. And as for the future belonging to me, is that a line of poetry? It sounds so unusual.’ He must like you – didn’t I say so? But he isn’t a salesman, Blind Owl.’ The German-language teacher generally chose a name for Ayami culled from whichever novel they were reading. She found Ayami’s real name much too strange, and not at all to her liking. She’d told Ayami that her real name made her uncomfortable and that, where possible, she wanted to avoid having to pronounce it. She had also asked not to hear it pronounced: ‘Whatever you do,’ she said, ‘just don’t say “Ayami”. And the same goes for calling me “Yeoni”.’

title story translated as Highway with Green Apples by Sora Kim-Russell: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 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. No.’ Ayami shook her head, but stopped as soon as she realised the pointlessness of such a gesture. He also said,’ the director’s voice continued, ‘that he’d never once managed to convince another person of anything. Whenever he spoke to anyone, their response amounted to nothing more than the world tossing a shovelful of earth onto his grave. Which meant that by this point in his life, he was buried deep, very deep; he laughed for a long time after he said that, bleating like a goat.’Deborah Smith (@londonkoreanist) was born in Doncaster in 1987. She studied English and then Korean literature in the UK, and has translated several books by Bae Suah and Han Kang. She publishes Asian literatures in translation through Tilted Axis Press, which she founded in 2015. Well, there are times when I can read someone’s lips without actually being able to see them. Though I can’t understand how it happens.’

The director’s friend was small, slight, and unfailingly elegant, even down to her waist-length hair. Her face, though, was severely marked from a childhood bout of smallpox, making it impossible to estimate her age on a first meeting. Her skin was mottled, almost as though it had been burned. She had a strangely rolling walk, like a boat bobbing on gentle waves. She generally kept to the shadows, but when necessary would extend her right hand, its pale skin unmarked, into the light. 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".But Ayami probably wouldn’t be able to visit the tropics this year, because the theatre would be closing down before the usual holiday period, and the possibility of her finding another job before then looked slim.