Cursed Bunny: Stories

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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. Scars” is reminiscent of Amos Tutuola’s “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” — a picaresque hallucination in which one horror stumbles into another in a jumble of supernatural confusion. But it is in the end comparable to nothing else: a sealed, sprawling mess of a story, with elements of folk tale, dream and traumatic memory, told in straightforward prose that makes the fantastical cruelties feel both more vivid and more unreal. 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.

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. The Head” follows a woman haunted by her own bodily waste. “The Embodiment” takes us into a dystopian gynecology office where a pregnant woman is told that she must find a father for her baby or face horrific consequences. Another story follows a young monster, forced into underground fight rings without knowing his own power. The titular fable centers on a cursed lamp in the shape of a rabbit, fit for a child’s bedroom but for its sinister capabilities.

Ruler of the Winds and Sands (바람과 모래의 지배자) takes us more in to the realm of legend, although with a science-fiction flavour. And the final story Reunion (재회) is set in Poland, with Polish text included (the author translates from the language) and is a love story of sorts with a ghostly twist. From an author never before published in the United States, Cursed Bunny is unique and imaginative, blending horror, sci-fi, fairy tales, and speculative fiction into stories that defy categorization. By turns thought-provoking and stomach-turning, here monsters take the shapes of furry woodland creatures and danger lurks in unexpected corners of everyday apartment buildings. But in this unforgettable collection, translated by the acclaimed Anton Hur, Chung’s absurd, haunting universe could be our own. A girl whose brother feeds on her blood, robots that take revenge on their owner and a bunny lamp with a deadly curse. Those are some of the bizarre, twisted plot lines in "Cursed Bunny," Bora Chung's first collection of short stories to appear in English, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. It was translated from Korean by Anton Hur. Author Bora Chung joins us now to talk about her collection. Welcome to the show. Extremely surprised this made the Man Booker International shortlist. I honestly have no idea how it managed it. The blurb informs that this is a 'genre-defying collection of short stories' that blur the lines between 'magical realism, horror and science-fiction,' which sounded instantly like something I would love. Not the case. Firstly, the prose is bland, so horribly bland. By the third story I was questioning the talent of the writer. I've read an Anton Hur translation before and enjoyed it so that's why I exclude them. The stories themselves, despite sounding fantastic, were on the most part just simply terrible. The first story (actually 2nd in the original) Head (머리) won the 1998 Yonsei Literature Prize, and was the author’s (successful) attempt to write a fantastical story in the style of Eastern European authors, the author herself having translated Bruno Schulz into Korean. It begins with a woman about to flush the toilet when she sees a head popping out, calling out to her ‘Mother’

CHUNG: I have no idea. I never imagined my book would reach anywhere outside Korea. So this is all very unreal to me. I feel like I'm in the middle of my own story, and my own stories don't really have a happy ending, so I'm probably in trouble. I don't know.The book is the debut short story collection by the Korean author, Bora Chung. I’ve had this strange book on my radar before it was longlisted for the Booker. A few of my GR friends raved about it and it prompted me to read a sample story I found on the internet. The story is called The Embodiment, a harrowing example of body horror and it still one of my favorites from the collection. Cursed Bunny is a collection of short stories inspired by Russian and Slavic fairytales, blending magic and horror to teach some critical lessons. Now a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Fiction. Winners announced Nov 15th** A stunning, wildly original debut from a rising star of Korean literature—surreal, chilling fables that take on the patriarchy, capitalism, and the reign of big tech with absurdist humor and a (sometimes literal) bite. WWB: The two of you have collaborated again on the forthcoming Your Utopia. How did that process differ from Cursed Bunny?