My Cultural Diet

When giant black orbs suddenly appear in Seoul and begin consuming people, society quickly breaks down under the horrific and inexplicable assault. One of the countless individuals caught up in the chaos is Jeong-su, a completely normal thirtysomething salesman who’s desperate to find his parents, and willing to do whatever it takes to escape the orbs and survive. It’s an intriguing premise that plays out like a modern Twilight Zone episode, and as a protagonist, Jeong-su alternates between pitiable and sympathetic, and pitiless and sociopathic from one page to the next. Originally published in 2009 as The Orb of Despair, Ewhan Kim’s novel occasionally feels like a damning indictment of modern South Korean society, and his view of human nature is not great (to put it mildly). In the end, however, The Black Orb just sort of fizzles out. Jeong-su becomes increasingly unsympathetic and uninteresting as a main character while Kim’s nihilistic observations about man’s inherent selfishness and cruelty feel rote, obvious, and tedious.

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