The Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung

The Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung

*Shortlisted for the 2026 URSULA K. LE GUIN PRIZE FOR FICTION*

Equal parts bone-chilling, wryly funny and deeply political, The Midnight Timetable is a masterful work of literary horror from one of our time's greatest imaginations.

'Truly nightmarish.' Andrew Michael Hurley
'I inhaled Bora Chung's book of ghost stories and then slept with the light on!' Avni Doshi
'Uniquely brilliant and exquisitely demented' Gerardo Sámano Córdova

In a labyrinthine research facility, where those who open the wrong door might find it's disappeared behind them or that the echoing footsteps they're running from are their own, an unnamed protagonist begins their night shift under the watchful eye of the building's enigmatic senior guard.

Each evening, as the fluorescent lights flicker and the silence grows heavier, the guard shares another tale of cursed objects and lives unspooled by vengeance, sorrow or revelation. But these are not mere ghost stories. They're warnings. Lessons. Or, perhaps, confessions . . .

As the nights stretch on and reality frays, our protagonist starts to suspect that the building itself is alive with malevolent intent and that the objects they guard aren't just cursed. They're waiting. Watching.

'Electrifying. A feast of a book. Strange, hypnotic and audacious.' Irenosen Okojie
'A fascinating novel of shifting realities centred by a steady, humane heart. Bora Chung is a master of concocting dreamscapes that linger.' Marie-Helene Bertino
'These ghost stories . . . mist off the page and leave the real world hazy and askew.' Pemi Aguda

Beautiful, eerie stories that are unpredictable and sprawl endlessly-- Kang Hwa-gil, author of ANOTHER PERSON
The keen insights into a society and the nonstop pacing of the folk tales kept me on the edge of my seat. -- Kim Bo-Young, author of National Book Award-longlisted ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES AND OTHER STORIES
Bora Chung's Cursed Bunny mines those places where what we fear is true and what is true meet and separate and re-meet. The resulting stories are indelible. Haunting, funny, gross, terrifying-and yet when we reach the end, we just want more. -- Alexander Chee
Bora Chung's stories glisten at the border of our weird world, and all our other weird worlds. A truly sublime book. -- Samantha Hunt on Your Utopia
Chung builds out her stories with imagination, absurdity and a dry sense of humor, all applied with X-Acto knife precision * New York Times Book Review on Your Utopia *
A] get-under-your-skin collection * LitHub on Cursed Bunny *
Frightening, fantastical, and oddly funny... absurdist horror with a feminist slant. * PEN America on Cursed Bunny *

Bora Chung is a writer and translator whose works include the National Book Award finalist and International Booker Prize-shortlisted Cursed Bunny. She has an MA in Russian Studies from Yale University and a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University. She has taught Russian language and literature and science fiction at Yonsei University and translates modern literary works from Russian and Polish into Korean.

Anton Hur was born in Stockholm and currently resides in Seoul. He won a PEN Translates grant for his translation of The Underground Village by Kang Kyeong-ae and a PEN/Heim grant for Bora Chung's Cursed Bunny, the latter of which was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780349705170
ISBN 10	0349705178
Title	The Midnight Timetable
Author	Bora Chung
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	John Murray Press
Year published	2025-10-02
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.