TABLE FOR ONE

by Yun Ko-Eun
translated by Lizzie Buehler

Columbia University Press

(www.cup.columbia.edu)
2024, 273 pages, $20

ISBN 978-0-231-19203-3

Click Here to Purchase

TABLE is a single-author collection. Learning how to eat out alone, with patience, love and style, is the centerpiece story.

A man has his own way of battling a pestilence of bedbugs in “Sweet Escape.”

“Hyeonmong Park’s Hall of Dreams.” A dream-seller of sorts makes a lot of money by “dreaming up” the hopes and expectations of his customers, real or not.

“Iceland.” For a worker in South Korea, Iceland has so much in store about it. The worker joins a group to study history and the many possibilities of the enchanted, alluring place.

“Don’t Cry, Hongdo.” Hongdo Park desperately wants to have a normal life, brought up in a fearful world by her mother’s insistence on organic living. Is living in organic hell such a bad thing? All the while, Hongdo is trying to find a good mate for her mom.