Short Stories — Literary Fiction

Dokgo, the “main” character, is a bit of an outlier: an unhoused man with self-inflicted amnesia who is positioned as beyond the standard ills of society and reacts as an idealized outsider might. He responds to physical threats in kind, and when his fists cannot do the talking his halting charisma smooths out a situation. or his guru-like wisdom or intellectual flexing solves the social puzzle as presented. He’s functionally a max-stat RPG protagonist, and you’re just sort of watching him decide via whim which way to solve each of the various subquests that pop up.

I am still a sucker for this structure, though, so even if the vibe was off, it’s still fine.

David DinaburgFebruary 21, 2026Short Stories, interconnected, translated, Korea, Convenience Store

A Girl Goes into the Forest

There is real bravery in presenting so many disjointed and abrupt tales, real danger that as many will fail to hit the reader as land in any meaningful way. Some stories are shorter than a page, some are thicker than mud, and it might serve as Rorschach test of Buzzfeed quiz to map out which stories meant what to whom. My Father and His Slim Beautiful Brunettes was, to me, the first remarkable note in the collection.

David DinaburgFebruary 6, 2022Fiction, Short Stories