On the HahaFiction shelf
The Cabinet
Audiobook available · 10 hr 29 min
Mr Kong’s filing cabinet contains people who refuse to fit ordinary categories: a man grows a tree from his finger, and a woman’s double ends her relationship for her. He has to deal with their problems as office work. Un-Su Kim’s fantastical novel makes human strangeness both a bureaucratic nuisance and a source of humor, in Sean Lin Halbert’s English translation.
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What makes it funny?
Kong works hard to win a job that gives him nothing to do, then exhausts every combination on an office cabinet’s lock to relieve the boredom. A discovery about humanity’s possible future begins as a way to kill office hours.
The comedy at work
Kim gives extraordinary transformations the practical inconvenience of administrative work. The callers’ impossible requests grow from familiar unhappiness about love, purpose and the lives they are expected to lead.
Try this if…
Kong’s case files suit a taste for dry social satire and loosely linked stories about strange people. The speculative ideas come with melancholy about work and loneliness.
Good to know
The book intersperses the symptomers’ stories with Kong’s life and takes a violent turn; I Should Read That flags graphic torture.
More funny fantasy
Sources & further reading
- Apple Books lists The Cabinet by Un-su Kim and translator Sean Lin Halbert at 304 pages, published by Watkins Media.
Book information
- Apple Books lists The Cabinet (Unabridged) by Un-su Kim, in English, at 10 hours 29 minutes.
Book information
- Long Beach Public Library
Library catalog
- Asian Review of Books review
Review
- I Should Read That review
Review
- Penguin Random House: The Cabinet
Publisher
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