At Night He Lifts Weights

by Kang Young-Sook, Janet Hong (Translator)

Overview

A disquieting vision of ecological dystopia in a collection by a major Korean writer.

An artist is plagued by desire for her mysterious double as disease spreads through an uncanny suburban landscape. An elderly woman suspects the old man who lifts weights in her neighborhood playground of being responsible for a spate of murders. While elsewhere, a woman who believes she’s been exposed to radioactive radiation inherits a warehouse where those fleeing the city can store their possessions.

Beneath the calm surface of the stories collected here, Kang Young-sook offers a disquieting vision of a society grappling with ecological catastrophe and unplaceable forms of loss. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945492709
Publisher:	Transit Books
Publication date:	11/14/2023
Pages:	225
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kang Young-sook is the author of four novels, including the award-winning Rina, and five short story collections. She often writes about the female grotesque, delving into varying genres as urban noir, fantasy, and ecofiction. She was most recently a resident at the National Centre for Writing, and currently teaches creative writing at Ewha Womans Universityand Korea National University of Arts.

Editorial Reviews

"This powerful collection strikingly depicts alienation, catastrophic loss, and disaster in ravaged landscapes....Young-sook’s perceptive stories provide an unwavering and honest gaze at human nature."—Publishers Weekly

There stories are populated by isolated characters who exist in crumbling worlds sometimes governed by the logic of dreams…but the malaise dissolves once the characters attempt to connect. “—The New Yorker

“These stories about environmental and social failure remind us that the dystopian future we fear is already here…With Kang holding the hammer, this collection lists to the side of atomization and desolation.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Much as the title of this collection evokes a kind of physical exertion, so too do the stories within hum with a visceral quality. Sometimes, that quality works to turn the bizarre into something familiar; at others, it magnifies the extraordinary and often disconcerting experiences of these stories’ protagonists."—Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders

"Perceptive and subversive, the stories in At Night He Lifts Weights vary in tone and genre, but each is singularly captivating, swirling around themes of loss — ecological destruction, loneliness, and death. Each has a subtle illusion of calm that conceals what lies below in the unnerving depths."—Pierce Alquist, Book Riot 

From the Publisher

2023-08-12
These stories about environmental and social failure remind us that the dystopian future we fear is already here.

Red dust settles on South Korea. Squeals escape from industrial pig farms. Toxic waste seeps into the water supply. Cities are “submerged in water the color of peanut butter.” Award-winning South Korean author Kang’s dystopian settings look a lot like our own. Her characters are being slowly suffocated by aimlessness and isolation, rising costs and ecological disasters. Protests pop up and then dissipate. In “Pripyat Storage,” a woman is convinced she will die of cancer from Chernobyl runoff, despite living in Seoul. When she inherits a storage facility from her mountain-climber mother, she is eager to preserve her imagined hometown, Pripyat. In “Greenland,” a group of male friends succeed in business together, then flee when it all comes crashing down, their wives left searching for them in “exercise bar” clubs. In the title story, an old woman struggles with living alone; she sits helpless as her toilet overflows again and again. Her long walks uncover the old man behind several young girls’ recent disappearances, and he becomes her obsession. The collection can be uneven—“Disaster Area Tour Bus,” a thinly veiled look at a post-Katrina New Orleans, adds little to our knowledge of that devastation. Furthermore, the collection’s prose can feel flat, dulling the emotional impact of its suspenseful plots. In “Radio and River,” the main character, looking at his immobile, couch-potato family, feels “like a child with a hammer who was told to strike either happiness or sadness, and he sensed the hammer in his hand starting to list to one side.” With Kang holding the hammer, this collection lists to the side of atomization and desolation.

A collection of pertinent, socially conscious stories is hindered by its flat prose.

Kirkus Reviews