Unexpected events, planned destruction. Conspiracy has dominated both dreams and reality, and there’s nowhere to return. Butterfly Sleep is the second full-length 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 have appeared serially in the fiction section of Webzine Moonji and garnered fervent reception. “Butterfly sleep” is a Korean idiom meaning “a baby’s slumber with its arms stretched over its head like a butterfly.” 

Choi Yoseop, the protagonist, is a lawyer at Sahae, a law firm aspiring to expand its business. With no connections through school, family, or hometown in the judicial world, his only appeal to higher-ups on the corporate ladder is his ruthless “survival of the fittest” worldview. Choi Yoseop’s words and actions represent an aspect the of diverse survival mechanisms adopted by those settled in a big city. Buying your kid’s way into school or scapegoating others is not something to point fingers at, at least to Yoseop. To reach the top of the social hierarchy in the city where the strong prey on the weak, people commit even worse crimes all the time.

In the novel, Choi Jae-hoon delineates in minute detail how desires and anxieties suppressed deep in human subconsciousness manifest in dreams. In his dreams, Yoseop is a runaway who faces highly unrealistic struggles and obstacles while being chased down by the police: a train ticket for a 3-hour trip costs more than two billion won, and when he is on the brink of drowning, he sucks the air from an abandoned bicycle tire. Does the novel expect its readers to dismiss all these bizarre details as dreamy nonsense? Not likely––once you dive deep into Choi Yoseop’s subconsciousness, you will see 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 in parallel with each other, the two pillars intersect as the myriad real-life elements get recontextualized in the dreams. With these overlaps ingeniously and meticulously placed throughout, Butterfly Sleep is a thrilling read packed with déjà vu, along with the cold chills prickling the nape of your neck. 

Choi Jaehoon began his literary career by winning the Literature and Society’s New Writers Award in 2007. The winner of the 2011 Hankook Ilbo Literary Award and the 2021 Hahn Moo-Sook Literary Award, Choi has published two short story collections, The Castle of Baron Curval and Dangerous Metaphor, and four novels, The Seven Eyes of Cats, Butterfly Sleep, The Chain of Angels, and Just a Murderer.