Isabel J. Kim’s Sublimation (2026) possesses the kind of high-concept premise writers dream about, and she clearly has the authorial chops to translate such a juicy premise into stirring fiction. What a smart, beautiful book.
The novel takes place in something of an alternate now, with one major change. In this world, at crucial moments, people can spontaneously “instantiate” — in other words, split into two separate versions of themselves. This tends to occur at key decision points during international travel, as happens with Soyoung Kang, a young South Korean woman who diverges as she leaves to forge a new life in New York City, as a new instance named “Rose.” When Soyoung’s grandfather dies, Rose returns to Seoul for the funeral, putting the estranged doubles back in touch for the first time since Rose’s departure. Happy with her new life in the U.S., Rose has no interest in “reintegrating” with Soyoung — something physical contact is known to trigger when instanced doubles come into close proximity. Unfortunately for Rose, Soyoung has other ideas, forcing the two versions to rejoin. This takes them down a precarious path, as the newly reintegrated Soyoung-Rose tries to rectify their newly entwined future. It’s an effort that embroils their childhood friend, Yujin — whose own American instance, “YJ,” works at Mergebreak, a company which has developed important instantiation technologies, and may harbor the means of delivering Soyoung-Rose to the destiny they crave.
Sublimation brilliantly literalizes a metaphor that is likely to resonate with readers who have immigrated from one country to another: the idea that crossing such a massive cultural divide might make one feel like two different versions of oneself. Instantiation does feel common enough in this world that, logistically, it might have problematic population ramifications of the “Thanos finger-snap-in-reverse” variety, but once that core speculative lie is accepted, the message is beautifully rendered. Kim challenges herself further by writing many chapters in second-person tense, a technique that often feels like a stunt. Here, though, the execution is not just effective on the face of it, but delivers the useful side effect of differentiating scenes between merged and separated instances. A lesser writer might have gotten lost in the formal exercise of it all, but Kim’s handling of character and theme is so adroit that the ambitious approach to symbolism and craft never gets distracting — and it locks everything into place with complicated romance dynamics and a clockwork conspiracy plot. Overall, a stunning debut novel from a writer to keep an eye on.