Same Bed Different Dreams: A Novel

ISBN: 0812998979

Author: Park, Ed

Condition: New

New York Times Book Review Editors Choice A wild, sweeping novel that imagines an alternate secret history of Korea and the traces it leaves on the present-loaded with assassins and mad poets, RPGs and slasher films, pop bands and the perils of social mediaYour view of twentieth-century history will be enlarged and altered. . . . A Gravitys Rainbow for another war, an unfinished war. -Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of SolitudeONE OF PUBLISHERS WEEKLYS TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Public Library, Polygon, Kirkus ReviewsIn 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japans defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the tragic North-South split that remains today.But what if the KPG still existed-now working toward a unified Korea, secretly pulling levers to further its aims? Same Bed Different Dreams weaves together three distinct narrative voices with an archive of mysterious images, and twists reality like a kaleidoscope. Korean history, American pop culture, and our tech-fraught lives come together in this extraordinary and unforgettable novel.Soon Sheen, a former writer now employed by the tech behemoth GLOAT, comes into possession of an unfinished book seemingly authored by the KPG. The manuscript is a riveting revisionist history, connecting famous names and obscure bit players to the KPGs grand project-everyone from Syngman Rhee and architect-poet Yi Sang to Jack London and Marilyn Monroe. M*A*S*H is in here, too, as are the Moonies and a history of violence extending from the assassination of President McKinley to the Reagan-era downing of a passenger plane that puts the world on the brink of war.From the acclaimed author of Personal Days, Same Bed Different Dreams is a raucously funny feat of imagination and a thrilling meld of history and fiction that pulls readers into another dimension-one in which utopia is possible.