The Cabinet, the latest work by Kim Un-su, the author of The Plotters (Polish: Likwidator), is an eccentric novel. Its greatest quality is the fact that you are not able to predict what you will find on the next page – everything is possible, both in terms of plot and form. The titular cabinet – Cabinet 13 – contains the files of people with extraordinary, superhuman properties, called symptomers in the novel. However, these are not superheroes like in Marvel, universe: their features are annoying and often useless, although sometimes funny. The care of Cabinet 13 falls to Mr. Kong – an average office worker whose relationship with the dying Professor Kwon, a symptom researcher, puts him in in a dangerous situation…
The Cabinet consists of short, fantastic images, from which you learn about the unusual properties of the people who ended up in the files. Form-wise, this book is close to People from My Neighborhood by Hiromi Kawakami – but Kim Un-Su’s story is connected by a fast-paced and slightly crazy plot, like Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima. If you don’t like ordinariness and boredom, you won’t find any of it in The Cabinet.
