The Midnight Timetable

*Shortlisted for the 2026 URSULA K. LE GUIN PRIZE FOR FICTION*

Equal parts bone-chilling, wryly funny and deeply political, The Midnight Timetable is a masterful work of literary horror from one of our times greatest imaginations.

Truly nightmarish.Andrew Michael Hurley
I inhaled Bora Chungs book of ghost stories and then slept with the light on!Avni Doshi
Uniquely brilliant and exquisitely dementedGerardo Sámano Córdova

In a labyrinthine research facility, where those who open the wrong door might find its disappeared behind them or that the echoing footsteps theyre running from are their own, an unnamed protagonist begins their night shift under the watchful eye of the buildings enigmatic senior guard.

Each evening, as the fluorescent lights flicker and the silence grows heavier, the guard shares another tale of cursed objects and lives unspooled by vengeance, sorrow or revelation. But these are not mere ghost stories. Theyre warnings. Lessons. Or, perhaps, confessions . . .

As the nights stretch on and reality frays, our protagonist starts to suspect that the building itself is alive with malevolent intent and that the objects they guard arent just cursed. Theyre waiting. Watching.

Electrifying. A feast of a book. Strange, hypnotic and audacious. Irenosen Okojie
A fascinating novel of shifting realities centred by a steady, humane heart. Bora Chung is a master of concocting dreamscapes that linger. Marie-Helene Bertino
These ghost stories . . . mist off the page and leave the real world hazy and askew. Pemi Aguda