Table for One 1인용 식탁 by Ko-eun Yun 윤고은

" An office worker who has no one to eat lunch with enrolls in a course that builds confidence about eating alone. A man with a pathological fear of bedbugs offers up his body to save his building from infestation. A time capsule in Seoul is dug up hundreds of years before it was intended to be unearthed. A vending machine repairman finds himself trapped in a shrinking motel during a never-ending snowstorm.
  In these and other indelible short stories, contemporary South Korean author Yun Ko-eun conjures up slightly off-kilter worlds tucked away in the corners of everyday life. Her fiction is bursting with images that toe the line between realism and the fantastic. Throughout Table for One, comedy and an element of the surreal are interwoven with the hopelessness and loneliness that pervades the protagonists’ decidedly mundane lives. Yun’s stories focus on solitary city dwellers, and her eccentric, often dreamlike humor highlights their sense of isolation. Mixing quirky and melancholy commentary on densely packed urban life, she calls attention to the toll of rapid industrialization and the displacement of traditional culture. Acquainting the English-speaking audience with one of South Korea’s breakout young writers, Table for One presents a parade of misfortunes that speak to all readers in their unconventional universality....."

                                                                                                               from Amazon

Table for One, Sweet Escape, Invader Graphic, Hyeonmong Park's Hall of Dreams, Roadkill, Time Capsule 1994, Iceland, Piercing, Don't Cry, Hongdo 같은 단편들로 이루어진 단편집이다. 난이도는 작품마다 조금씩 다른지만 전체적으로 인터넷의 도움을 받아야 하는 표현들이 등장하는 편이다. 문장의 구조보다는 단어들에 대한 난이도가 독자에 따라서 어렵게 느낄 수 있을 것이다. 책의 선전문구처럼 한 작품 속에 사실성과 SF적이고 환상적인 요소들의 이야기가 등장하기 때문에 내용파악에 힘들어 할 수 있는 독자도 있을 수 있다. 하지만 익숙한 이야기들 같으면서도 이야기의 전개가 참신성을 느낄 수 있는 작품들이었다.