Same Bed Different Dreams

Same Bed Different Dreams

Ed Park

#257 of 8,085 books · #64 in Science Fiction

Won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (2023). Also shortlisted or longlisted for 1 other award.

Same Bed Different Dreams won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a Publishers Weekly best book of the year and a New York Times Book Review editors' choice. 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. 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.