An Chang-Joon
Sarabande Books
11 March 2025
240
eBook - PDF
Short Stories
ARC via Edelweiss
Imagine a space where cities and municipalities are delineated only by letters. A place in flux, a freewheeling confluence that does not commit to being American, Korea, or even Korean American. This is where God-Disease takes place. Strange things happen here. Identities warp and shift; sometimes they vanish altogether. In the titular story, a museum insect curator returns to her birth town, J Municipality, feeling empty and searching for answers to her mother’s absence; was it insanity that plagued her, or was it shin-byeong—god-disease?
Equal parts Southern Korean Gothic and slipstream, the collection is a meditation on language, identity, and names, and how deceptively fragile they can be.
God-Disease was a fascinating collection of short stories that were bizarre and thought-provoking at the same time. I can't say too much about them as I want to avoid spoilers, but they were all dark and strange, and I had some bizarre dreams that night after reading them! Despite being short, easy reads, they had a lot of depth and I found myself still thinking about them in the days after I finished the book. I definitely recommend it to fans of Gothic tales and fans of Asian speculative fiction in general. I am giving it 4.5 stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
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