by Ed Park
First published 2025
A college student agrees to act in his friend's movie and watches the boundaries dissolve between his scripted role and his actual identity. In another story, a man faces a crisis and finds his entire life history locked behind forgotten passwords he cannot recall. A film director sits with an aging movie star, recording commentary for an obscure 1980s science fiction film that neither can quite remember making. These characters move through sixteen interconnected tales where the ordinary world reveals its strange underbelly. Park creates people who struggle with fading youth and fleeting artistic moments. They confront the weight of small daily choices and discover unexpected meaning in life's ridiculous turns. The stories blend the familiar texture of contemporary existence with surreal possibilities that feel both alien and true.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary, magical-realism
Vibes: darkly-humorous, existential, introspective, surreal, thought-provoking
Tropes: identity-dissolution, interconnected-narratives, unreliable-reality
Setting: Atlantis
224 pages · Hardcover · Random House