11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
A dazzling speculative novel ponders life's possibilities
The Oscar-nominated film 'Past Lives' was the wistful story of a love triangle. But the tension for its female protagonist was not simply between two partners but between two selves — a past in Seoul lived in Korean and a present as a New Yorker thriving in English. Suspended in that tension between here and there, its screenplay by director Celine Song was a classic work of immigrant fiction. Counterfactuals and imagined homelands have always haunted and inspired displaced artists. In his debut novel, 'Archive of Unknown Universes,' the brilliant young writer Ruben Reyes Jr. turns that art of speculation into a riveting saga of answers.