The nine stories that make up this collection depict a wide variety of contemporary Koreans navigating a world focused on material wealth and social power, in which family ties have been disrupted and all relationships are dysfunctional. Unpredictable and enigmatic, these tales, though taking place in what would appear to be a shallow, materialistic environment, are nonetheless woven through with rich threads of imagination and fantasy: parables for the self-help age.

Kim Gyeong-uk was born in Gwangju, South Jella Province, South Korea, in 1971 and is currently a professor of Creative Writing at Korea National University of Arts. He debuted as a fiction writer in 1993 when he won the Jak Ga Se Gey Best New Writer Award with his novella An Outsider.