In “Machine City,” a college student’s chance role in a friend’s movie blurs the line between his character and his true self. (Is he a robot?) In “Slide to Unlock,” a man comes to terms with his life via the passwords he struggles to remember in extremis. (What’s his mom’s name backward?) And in “Weird Menace,” a director and faded movie star gab about science fiction, bad costume choices and lost loves on a commentary track for a B-film from the ’80s that neither remembers all that well. In Ed Park’s utterly original collection, AN ORAL HISTORY OF ATLANTIS, characters bemoan their fleeting youth, focus on their breathing, meet cute, break up, write book reviews, translate ancient glyphs, bid on stuff online, whale watch, and once in a while find solace in the sublime.

In 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japan’s defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the tragic North-South split that remains today. But what if the KPG still existed --- now working toward a unified Korea, secretly pulling levers to further its aims? SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS weaves together three distinct narrative voices with an archive of mysterious images and twists reality like a kaleidoscope. Korean history, American pop culture and our tech-fraught lives come together in acclaimed author Ed Park’s novel.