Sublimation

Nebula Award winner Kim debuts with a strikingly original work of speculative fiction that brilliantly uses an audacious conceit—that immigration literally splits a person into two separate “instances” of themselves, one who moves to their new home and one who stays behind—to excavate questions of identity, belonging, and assimilation. Soyoung Rose Kang instanced at age 10 when she and her mother emigrated from Korea to the U.S., and the two versions of herself haven’t spoken in 20 years. When their grandfather dies, Rose returns to Korea for the funeral and is forced to reckon with the stranger her Korean self has become. The novel interweaves Rose and Soyoung’s fraught reunion with a story line following Soyoung’s best friend, Yujin, and his more recently instanced American counterpart, YJ, whose careful coordination with each other offers a pointed contrast to Soyoung’s and Rose’s estrangement. Meanwhile, large corporations are looking to commodify the process of reintegrating separate instances. Kim’s worldbuilding is impeccable, extending so far as to reimagine classic literature through the lens of instancing (“In the narrative, Odysseus dislikes the man his instance became after he left for Troy—weak willed and unable to stand up to his wife’s suitors”). The gorgeously rendered and deeply unsettling second-person narration enhances the intense and emotional reading experience. The result is a sharp, deeply felt first outing from a writer already at the top of her game. Agent: Steven Salpeter, Curtis Brown Ltd. (June)