Cursed Bunny: Shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize

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i don't know if that makes sense, but it has to add up at least a little, because i didn't like this one much. A darkly funny domestic horror novel about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husband and herself from the vengeful ghost of her mother-in-law. While the stories in Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung blend elements of horror, fantasy and the surreal, each is viscerally rooted in the real fears and pressures of everyday life.”

With the very real risk of being called a party pooper, a spoil-sport, old-fashioned and worse, I think Bora Chung's short story collection is bitter, sour, cruel, depressing, and yes ultimately evil. I took the first story seriously thinking that she was making a strong comparison between the haves and have nots - but by the end I was laughing because of the un-erasable image of that woman emerging from the toilet, with her wet hair hanging over her face - The Ring, horror film 2002 - anyone? Ok, so she's climbing out of a tv. Cursed Bunny is on relatively new press Honford Star , who specialize in translating literature from East Asia. They are a reader’s dream: They employ East Asian artists to design their covers, and the books themselves are published in East Asia and they are robust. Plus there’s French flaps (I can’t resist those) i am a weak person, but...i am physically incapable of having any opinions on this story beyond how disgusting it is.Equally horrific is Snare, a fable-like narrative playing on Aesop’s The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg. A man finds an injured fox that bleeds gold, and instead of freeing it, keeps it alive but constantly wounded and bleeding, so he can profit from its pain. Generational curses abound once again, and the man is forced to repeat his evils with his own loved ones, and so the pattern continues. Now there are ten stories in this collection, but I’m not going to discuss all of them in this review—that’s something for another time. I’m going to focus in and pinpoint the stories I found most interesting and had values I could take away with, so let us delve a bit deeper, shall we? She got angry. “I never gave the likes of you permission to live in my toilet. I never even created the likes of you in the first place, so stop calling me your mother. Leave before I call the exterminators.” Like all great stories, there’s a lot of meaning contained in the strangeness. Generally when Bora Chung’s characters become greedy for power, money or social gain they will suffer. Badly. Since these stories are structured like fairy-tales it makes a lot of sense that there is a moral tale embedded within the text. Chung debuts with a well-crafted and horrifying collection of dark fairy tales, stark revenge fables, and disturbing body horror. Clever plot twists and sparkling prose abound. Chung’s work is captivating and terrifying.”

Haven’t finished reading: Janusz Zajdel was a Polish nuclear physicist and a SF writer with an amazing dystopian vision. I started reading his novel entitled Van Troff’s Cylinder ( Cylinder Van Troffa, 1980) but then I started translating other Polish books at the same time and got busy with deadline etc and had to stop reading and focus on the translation first. This happens all the time. But I was translating Polish books at the time so Zajdel would’ve understood, I hope. Should really finish the Cylinder though. Like a family in a home, fantastic stories gather together in this book. The stories not only take their revenge, but also love you, and comfort you. You'll end up completely endeared to this fascinating collection!” Bora Chung (born 1976) is a South Korean writer and translator. Her collection of short stories, Cursed Bunny, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.Honford Star describes Chung’s work as ‘genre-defying’, and this is certainly apt. Cursed Bunny moves from horror to science-fiction, from magical realism to dark fantasy with ease, and with a level of quality so consistent it beggars belief. Chung sows seeds of distrust throughout the book; there is a palpable sense that she is not on our side. She wants to show us something awful whether or not we want to see it. If there are weaknesses in the collection, they are minor. Goodbye, My Love, a story about androids, seems misplaced, and of all the stories has the most familiar plot; but as a meditation on abuse, and the nature of love and memory, it works well. If the aesthetics of the book are the only thing of quality, think again; Cursed Bunny, is without any doubt, THE best short story collection I have read in a long time. South Korea’s Bora Chung’s short stories are brimming with horror, fairy tale elements and great doses of weirdness. This is a world where heads emerge from toilets, orphans acquire unknown superpowers, rabbits cause financial ruin and foxes bleed gold. The desperation and immense fear that your life, as well as the future to come, hinged on a moment. I could also understand how, in a situation where there was a single person who could kill you but also save you, all your survival instincts would be used towards satisfying that person.’ A prizewinning, thrillingly subversive debut novel about a woman in Japan who avoids harassment at work by perpetuating, for nine months and beyond, the lie that she's pregnant Most of the male characters in these stories hunger for power but are unable to stop it from corrupting them. Most of the female characters suffer, lose agency and are powerless in the face of patriarchal greed and control. The collection can admittedly feel relentlessly bleak at times, disturbing and frightening but with a staunch moral compass. There is little offered in the way of hope, or grace, or relief, especially in the Cronenberg-esque body horror of some of the more visceral stories, but with Hur’s crisp clean translation of Chung’s effective, simple language, it is hard to stop reading.

A collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.If I’m being vague about these stories it is because they are best read with no idea what is coming. Each takes a surprising turn that is less a twist-ending and more a natural and well-earned sudden shift in perspective or revealed information that makes you feel like the floor has dropped out from under you. This book gave me chills several times as well as made me rather uncomfortable in ways that truly capture the power of a well-written story. Whether borrowing from fable, folktale, speculative fiction, science fiction, or horror, Chung’s stories corkscrew toward devastating conclusions—bleak, yes, but also wise and honest about the nightmares of contemporary life. Don't read this book while eating—but don’t skip these unflinching, intelligent stories, either.” There are big kernels of truth to the reality we live in inside of the stories, so it’s not like it’s trying to be this way on purpose. Chung’s prose is like a knife, something that is very precise and clearly carefully deliberated upon when choosing its themes and subjects. The very first story is about a head appearing in a woman’s toilet, and she treats it with blatant disregard.

Bora Chung has written three novels and three collections of short stories. She has an MA in Russian and East European area studies from Yale University and a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University. She currently teaches Russian language and literature and science fiction studies at Yonsei University and translates modern literary works from Russian and Polish into Korean. Surreal and grotesque, with gestures towards supernatural, fabular and weird fiction, this is a mixed bag of stories. The first half of the collection was better for me (The Head, The Embodiment, Cursed Bunny, The Frozen Finger, Snare) then there's a transitional AI/speculative fiction entry with Goodbye My Love that feels over-familiar even to me and I rarely read in that genre but it's similar to Machines Like Me, Klara and the Sun, Little Eyes. The final four longer tales just didn't really work for me and feel like Chung is trying things out without the assurance of voice and vision that characterises the early stories.A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery Bora Chung Soars with a provocative collection of stories. ...remarkable... The 10 stories are beyond imagination: breathtaking, wild, crazy, the most original fiction I have ever encountered. …each more astounding than the last.”