Tower
SynopsisPlot
Each story deals with how citizens living in the hypermodern high-rise deal with various influences of power in their lives: a group of researchers have to tell their boss that a major powerbroker is a dog, a woman uses the power of the internet to rescue a downed fighter pilot abandoned by the government, and an out-of-towner finds himself in charge of training a gentle elephant to break up protests. Bae explores the forces that shape modern life with wit and a sly wink at the reader.
Story
About this book
Tower by Myung-hoon Bae is a collection of six interconnected stories set inside a single enormous skyscraper-city called Beanstalk. The building functions as an entire urban society, with its own citizens, government, economy, and social hierarchies. Each story follows different inhabitants as they encounter the forces of authority and institutional power that shape daily life within the structure.
The situations range from absurd to pointed. In one story, a team of researchers must find a way to inform their superior that a powerful figure in their world is, in fact, a dog. In another, a woman turns to the internet to organize the rescue of a downed fighter pilot after the government refuses to act. A third follows an outsider who arrives in Beanstalk and is assigned the unexpected task of training a gentle elephant to disperse protests. Bae uses dark humor and satirical scenarios to examine how ordinary people navigate bureaucracy, media, and concentrated power.
Originally written in Korean, the book compresses an entire society into a vertical setting. The enclosed world of Beanstalk lets each story isolate a different pressure point, from corporate absurdity to state indifference, while the shared location ties them into a single, layered picture of modern institutional life.
