Sunday, December 3, 2023 at 2:00 pm
Talking Leaves…Books & Hallwalls present
Location: Hallwalls Cinema
About SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS 
A wild, sweeping novel that imagines an alternate secret history of Korea and the traces it leaves on the present—loaded with assassins and mad poets, RPGs and slasher films, pop bands and the perils of social media
"Your view of twentieth-century history will be enlarged and altered.…A Gravity's Rainbow for another war, an unfinished war." —Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude
In 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japan's defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the tragic North-South split that remains today.
But what if the KPG still existed—now working toward a unified Korea, secretly pulling levers to further its aims? Same Bed Different Dreams weaves together three distinct narrative voices with an archive of mysterious images, and twists reality like a kaleidoscope. Korean history, American pop culture, and our tech-fraught lives come together in this extraordinary and unforgettable novel.
Soon Sheen, a former writer now employed by the tech behemoth GLOAT, comes into possession of an unfinished book seemingly authored by the KPG. The manuscript is a riveting revisionist history, connecting famous names and obscure bit players to the KPG's grand project—everyone from Syngman Rhee and architect-poet Yi Sang to Jack London and Marilyn Monroe. M*A*S*H is in here, too, as are the Moonies and a history of violence extending from the assassination of President McKinley to the Reagan-era downing of a passenger plane that puts the world on the brink of war.
From the acclaimed author of Personal Days, Same Bed Different Dreams is a raucously funny feat of imagination and a thrilling meld of history and fiction that pulls readers into another dimension—one in which utopia is possible.
One of the Most Anticipated books of Fall by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Lit Hub, Vulture, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more.
"I'm in awe of this book—a brilliant postmodern romp rife with nested narratives, imaginary novels, and ecstatic digressions, which happen to be all of my favorite things. It's a breath of fresh air, really—novels are never ambitious in quite this way anymore, and I almost forgot how good it feels to be dunked in someone else's extravagant puzzle-making. (The brain-exploding qualities call to mind Infinite Jest while being much friendlier to read; I suspect it will be widely compared to Pynchon, and probably DeLillo, but Park's moment-to-moment generic flexibility also brings peak David Mitchell to mind.) Though the novel takes us what feels like a million places, the core of the book is wrapped around an alternative history of Korea, one in which the Korean Provisional Government, a government in exile formed in response to Japanese occupation in 1919, never disbanded, and rather continues to operate in secret to this day. And yes, if like me, you can't remember anything from your history classes to save your life, reading this book will probably spool outward into several other connected reading rabbit holes, but it will all be so interesting that you will not complain." —Lit Hub
"Grander lauds are certainly forthcoming for his stupendous tome, a synergistic reclamation of East-West history, acrobatic sf, and biting sociopolitical commentary presented as three distinct prongs that brilliantly meld by the book's end. ... Park blurs fact and fiction so seamlessly that search results will undoubtedly surprise if not shock, albeit not without reverential delight." —Booklist, Starred Review
"Formally ambitious .... a wild, often speculative trip through 100 years of Korean history." —The Washington Post
"Somehow, novelist and literary editor Ed Park manages to seamlessly pack elements of techno-dystopia, real and imagined Korean history, and a dose of American pop culture into this sweeping novel. While this is a work of fiction, its handling of alternate histories and the influence of social media make it a shockingly relevant portal into our near future." —San Francisco Chronicle
"Park spent nine years working on his new surrealist novel, which imagines an alternate political reality. In this world, the Korean Provisional Government, a resistance organization formed in March 1919, is still working toward a unified Korea." —The New York Times
"When Park's new novel was pitched to me as 'Squid Game meets Gravity's Rainbow,' suffice to say I was intrigued. Personal Days, Park's 2008 office novel, is one of the best in that suddenly exploding mini-genre, and this next novel feels bigger and more ambitious and weird as hell. Same Bed Different Dreams is a multifaceted alt-history that traces the ripple effect of what might happen if the Korean Provisional Government had never been dissolved before the partition of North and South. Park has spent years as an editor in book and magazine publishing helping writers to make their own work better, so it's thrilling to see what he can do now that he's put on his author hat once again." —Vulture
"Park returns 15 years after Personal Days with an ingenious postmodern epic of colonial and postcolonial Korea framed in a satire of America's publishing and tech industries ... Park exhibits a wizardly range of styles; he can be funny, such as when Soon's dog digs up a missing chapter of Echo's book just in time for Soon to read it; lyrical, as in a description of snow as Jotter prepares for a mission ('white pinpricks on my jacket like a universe being born'); or poignant, as with revelations about who was on the doomed flight. By the end, it miraculously hangs together, driven by Park's deep passion for Korean history. This tribute to the fractured peninsula's citizens, diaspora, and allies is one for the ages." –Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"[A] beguiling, deliberately knotty second novel ... built on three intersecting narratives ... There's no question that Park is in control of the story, and he reconciles it all brilliantly. It's an encyclopedic yarn about Korea's tragic and difficult 20th century, but also a compassionate study of how much we inherit culturally from the past, and how we're connected to it more deeply than we're inclined to think. And for all its Pynchonian gamesmanship, it's siimply fun, rife with detours on parenthood, literature, hockey, and spycraft ... Park is a savvy and entertaining guide ... A brash, rangy, sui generis feat of speculative fiction." —Kirkus, Starred Review
"[A] ... witty and inventive new novel." —Lit Hub
"Genius . . . Same Bed Different Dreams is an extraordinary—and hilarious—genre-busting nesting doll of comedy, science fiction, and thriller and, at its core, an epic compendium of Korean history that's also the dark history of American foreign entanglements. It's like no other novel I've read before—a cabinet of wonders that demands to be read and reread." —Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings
"I can't stop reading, thinking, and dreaming about this feverish, mind-altering marvel of a book." —Hua Hsu, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Stay True
"Your view of twentieth-century history will be enlarged and altered by Ed Park's mysterious, panoramic novel. It seems to draw on Bolaño, Pynchon, and DeWitt for its radical structure, yet remains grounded in a droll, sweet voice we've wished to hear again since Personal Days. This is a Gravity's Rainbow for another war, an unfinished war. Having been enlisted in the Korean Provisional Government, I now await my instructions." —Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude
"A book of dizzying scope and erudition…very funny, intimate, and playful and interested in basic questions of existence, beginning with: Why are we here and what gives us meaning?" —Dave Eggers, author of The Circle
"A novel to get lost in and a feat of imagination…I read it with awe for its construction and for the sheer pleasure of its language." —Charles Yu, National Book Award–winning author of Interior Chinatown
"Totally astounding—Same Bed Different Dreams emits a prismatic intelligence operating on multiple frequencies. I didn't know I'd been waiting for a book like this until I encountered it." —Ling Ma, author of Severance
"Same Bed Different Dreams is a kaleidoscope of Koreamericana; a crowd of cracked voices; a gorgeous, hilarious, provisional dream; a wonder." —Namwali Serpell, author of The Furrows
"No blurb could adequately praise or even sum up this novel. All I know is that Same Bed Different Dreams belongs in the company of a rare few dark and comic masterpieces of invention. It disarmed me with sheer delight." —Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen
Ed Park is the author of the novels Personal Days and Same Bed Different Dreams. He is a founding editor of The Believer, and has worked in newspapers, book publishing, and academia. His writing appears in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Born in Buffalo in 1970, he lives in Manhattan with his family.
P.S. On May 6, 2024 it was announced that Ed Park's Same Bed Different Dreams was one of two runners-up for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. The winner, Jayne Anne Phillips, for her novel Night Watch (Knopf, 2023), read in Hallwalls' Fiction Diction reading series on Septemberr 10, 1982, when Park was 12 years old.