문학과 지성사

Unexpected events, planned destruction. Conspiracy has dominated both dreams and reality, and there’s nowhere to return. Butterfly Sleep is the second novel of Choi Jae-hoon, whose flexible yet straightforward prose is marked by his bold approaches and compositional prowess in weaving the familiar with the uncanny through experiments on narrative conventions. This book compiles the chapters that were serialized in the fiction section of Webzine Moonji and received a fervent response. “Butterfly sleep” is a Korean idiom referring to a baby’s slumber with its arms stretched above its head like a butterfly.

Choi Yoseop, the main character, is a lawyer at Sahae, a law firm with ambitions to expand its business. With no connections through school, family, or hometown ties in the legal world, his only appeal to the higher-ups on the corporate ladder is his ruthless “survival of the fittest” worldview.

Yoseop’s words and actions reflect one form of the diverse survival strategies adopted by those trying to make it in a big city. Buying your child’s way into school or scapegoating others isn’t something to criticize—at least not in Yoseop’s eyes. In a city where the strong prey on the weak, people commit even worse crimes all the time to climb the social ladder.

In the novel, Choi Jae-hoon delineates in minute detail how desires and anxieties suppressed deep within the human subconscious manifest in dreams. In his dreams, Yoseop is a runaway facing highly unrealistic struggles and obstacles while being chased by the police: a train ticket for a three-hour trip costs more than two billion won, and when he is on the brink of drowning, he sucks air from an abandoned bicycle tire.

Does the novel expect its readers to dismiss all these bizarre details as mere dream nonsense? Not likely—once you dive deep into Choi Yoseop’s subconscious, you will uncover the novel’s hidden strategies that complicate the logical leaps and distortions featured in his dreams.

Butterfly Sleep stands on two pillars: one is the unsettling fantasies in the form of dreams that robustly fuel the narrative, and the other is the cold blooded reality that drives the heart-racing reading pace in collaboration with the fantasies. Though seemingly parallel, these two pillars intersect as myriad real-life elements are recontextualized within the dreams. With these overlaps ingeniously and meticulously placed throughout, Butterfly Sleep is a thrilling read packed with déjà vu, accompanied by cold chills prickling the nape of your neck.