“A surreal, riveting, keep-the-lights-on masterwork of horror . . . I will be haunted by this book for years to come.” —Kim Fu, author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
I know this place.The room is too dim to see clearly. It smells like the bones.
Yewon dreams of a hotel. In the hotel, there are infinite keys to infinite rooms—and a quiet terror she is both eager to understand and desperate to escape. When Yewon wakes, she sees her life: a young woman, out of her job at a convenience store, trapped in the tiny South Korean village of her birth, watching her mother wash the bones of their ancestors in their decrepit bathtub. Every house has them, these rotting and fragmented ribs, tibias, and femurs, whose constant care and persistent stench serve as reminders of what they have all lost to the Forgotten War that never seems to end.
Now Yewon’s brother is stationed near the North Korean border, her sister has experienced a life-changing tragedy, and her mother is overwhelmed by anxiety, her health declining. When Yewon begins to drive a local woman named Ms. Han, a mysterious and aging North Korean refugee, to visit her brother at a distant prison, Yewon’s dreams intensify. As the line between reality and illusion slowly begins to blur, Yewon is led to an unsettling truth about her country’s collective heritage.
A work of literary horror in the gothic tradition, The Invisible Hotel is a startling, speculative tale of a woman in crisis and in stasis, and a country’s shifting identity in the long afterlife of the Korean War.
Genre: Horror
I know this place.The room is too dim to see clearly. It smells like the bones.
Yewon dreams of a hotel. In the hotel, there are infinite keys to infinite rooms—and a quiet terror she is both eager to understand and desperate to escape. When Yewon wakes, she sees her life: a young woman, out of her job at a convenience store, trapped in the tiny South Korean village of her birth, watching her mother wash the bones of their ancestors in their decrepit bathtub. Every house has them, these rotting and fragmented ribs, tibias, and femurs, whose constant care and persistent stench serve as reminders of what they have all lost to the Forgotten War that never seems to end.
Now Yewon’s brother is stationed near the North Korean border, her sister has experienced a life-changing tragedy, and her mother is overwhelmed by anxiety, her health declining. When Yewon begins to drive a local woman named Ms. Han, a mysterious and aging North Korean refugee, to visit her brother at a distant prison, Yewon’s dreams intensify. As the line between reality and illusion slowly begins to blur, Yewon is led to an unsettling truth about her country’s collective heritage.
A work of literary horror in the gothic tradition, The Invisible Hotel is a startling, speculative tale of a woman in crisis and in stasis, and a country’s shifting identity in the long afterlife of the Korean War.
Genre: Horror
Praise for this book
"How does a war play out in a person, a family, and through generations? The Invisible Hotel asks this ambitious and heartbreaking question. In prose that is sharp, clear, and startling, Yeji Y. Ham articulates the struggle to navigate trauma, and find joy, in the aftermath of the Korean War. This book is spectacular-a horror story made into art by way of unsettling truths." - Claire Cameron
"The Invisible Hotel wrestles artfully with big, vital questions: How do we honor and care for our elders without reinforcing a cycle of generational trauma? How do we forge new, joyful paths without indulging in mass cultural amnesia or closing our eyes to a world on fire? That it does so in a surreal, riveting, keep-the-lights-on masterwork of horror is all the more extraordinary. I will be haunted by this book for years to come." - Kim Fu
"The Invisible Hotel traps us in a haunting labyrinth where the wounds of war gape open, bones tether, and the bond of family may be the one key to set us free. Yeji Y. Ham has crafted a luminously spellbinding narrative, knitting history, grief, and love to explore the knots that tie a family and a country." - Gerardo Sámano Córdova
"Yeji Y. Ham's The Invisible Hotel is an absolute fever dream-a book that explores, with haunted grace and magical wildness, the inescapable ghosts of a fractured, heartbroken country, and one woman's relentless quest to rush headlong into the labyrinths and mysteries that make up her family. What a thrill to read this: propulsive, electric, full of fury and ecstatic writing, you won't be able to put this one down." - Paul Yoon
"The Invisible Hotel wrestles artfully with big, vital questions: How do we honor and care for our elders without reinforcing a cycle of generational trauma? How do we forge new, joyful paths without indulging in mass cultural amnesia or closing our eyes to a world on fire? That it does so in a surreal, riveting, keep-the-lights-on masterwork of horror is all the more extraordinary. I will be haunted by this book for years to come." - Kim Fu
"The Invisible Hotel traps us in a haunting labyrinth where the wounds of war gape open, bones tether, and the bond of family may be the one key to set us free. Yeji Y. Ham has crafted a luminously spellbinding narrative, knitting history, grief, and love to explore the knots that tie a family and a country." - Gerardo Sámano Córdova
"Yeji Y. Ham's The Invisible Hotel is an absolute fever dream-a book that explores, with haunted grace and magical wildness, the inescapable ghosts of a fractured, heartbroken country, and one woman's relentless quest to rush headlong into the labyrinths and mysteries that make up her family. What a thrill to read this: propulsive, electric, full of fury and ecstatic writing, you won't be able to put this one down." - Paul Yoon
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