Now a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Fiction. Winners announced Nov 15th** escalating into full-on wails. Whether they were tears of relief, sadness from losing the baby, or of something else entirely, she herself couldn’t tell. How to define the genre of this book? Maybe I would call it literary horror. Some stories have elements of fantasy others of SF, historical fiction, feminist literature but all share a horror flavour and are very well written (and translated). Most story dieal wtih some sort of trauma and some have a moral at the end. Billed as a weird collection of genre-bending short stories, the International Booker Prize shortlisted Cursed Bunny made waves in 2022 upon the release of its English translation. It received recognition for its bold, disturbing, and thought-provoking stories. Bora Chung undoubtedly has a vivid imagination. These stories cross many worlds and experiences, often with little to no context or explanation. For readers that can embrace that ambiguity, this will surely compel them. I am not such a reader.

I was ready to DNF after this one. This is pointless and confusing. What a long way of saying that you shouldn't spread hate because it will consume you. RASCOE: But this one will have a happy ending because this is a great book. This is a beautiful book, and I don't say that lightly. So this will have a good ending.The Frozen Finger (차가운 손가락) is a rather surreal ghost story, and Snare (덫) a genuinely creepy folk-tale type of story about a man who finds a fox, caught in a snare, that bleeds gold. He takes it home and uses it to build his wealth, but when the fox dies and his twins are born, his Midas-like obsession takes a sinister and disturbing turn, cursed perhaps by the fox. 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.

My favourite really had to be "The Head" in which a woman is tortured by a creature that keeps emerging in her toilet bowl in this mildly offensive story. The story is a surreally humorous yet oddly upsetting tale that it was a brilliant piece for putting the wind up with that opening. It was just witless and aghasting, especially as a frequent user of a toilet. Chi Tai-we’s ‘The Membranes,’ finally out in English, is dated as sci-fi, but its mind-bending narrative was a prescient exploration of identity. RASCOE: Oh, I know. That bunny is - whew, that bunny. I said - I mean, when he started chomping on the brain, I was like, yes (laughter).There is absolutely no reason this needed to be this damn long. And all this misery for what? He overcomes the evil so easily and then the story just ends and I am confused and unsatisfied.

CHUNG: Fairy tales - usually, the European ones that we are kind of used to in the English-speaking world has a certain way of plot development. And I really love that structure, so I try to use it whenever it seems fun. And I add a Korean reality, the things that I see or the things that I heard from somebody else and wed that kind of magical twist to it. And I hope that adds some fresh elements to the familiar structure. Cursed Bunny,” the titular story, is the meditation on capitalism and greed that we all need in this day and age. A consistent theme throughout the stories are the notions of trauma, abuse, and power on our everyday lives, whether it’s from an external force or via an internal force, such as a family member. “Cursed Bunny” tells the story through a narrator whose grandfather knew this tale. A CEO’s grandson is given a cursed bunny and slowly dies, while the family quite literally rots of greed. One of the things I liked most was the genre-bending aspect of the short stories in Cursed Bunny. For instance, Goodbye my love has some elements of science fiction, Scars of fantasy, Reunion of a ghost and love story, Snare of a myth or fairytale. Interestingly, Bora Chung's stories showcase even level which is not often the case in collections. As for my personal preferences, the closer to magical realism or fantasy and farther from typical horror, the better. The two stories which I liked the best are Scars and Ruler of the Winds and Sands. There was a big potential in Snare also but it turned out too dark for my liking. Oddly, the title story, Cursed Bunny, appealed to me the least. An added bonus for me: Reunion is set in an unnamed city in Poland which resembles Cracow and there are even some sentences in Polish. Like the work of Carmen Maria Machado and Aoko Matsuda, Chung’s stories are so wonderfully, blisteringly strange and powerful that it's almost impossible to put Cursed Bunnydown.”―Kelly Link, bestselling author of Get In Trouble

In 2022, the English edition of her short story collection Cursed Bunny translated by Anton Hur was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. [2] The ten stories borrow from different genres, including magical realism, horror and science fiction. [1] [4] In September 2023 the book was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. [6]

Anton Hur (AH):I was actually looking for a book that was Korean and was speculative fiction because I really wanted to work in a genre that I loved reading in. I mean, before then, I was doing these very big, heavy historical books, which are fine, but not necessarily something that I am always reading since a child. These ten stories by South Korean author Bora Chung started off with somewhat lighter, surreal, yet meaningful horror - the opening stories were just breathtaking: “The Head”, the story of a woman whose remains of all sorts, hair, skin, nails, feces assemble to form a new being; “The Embodiment”, in which a woman falls pregnant mysteriously to an even more mysterious “child”; and the titular “Cursed Bunny” in which karma finds its place through cursed objects. I liked the kind of sharp critique creeping through this intro, along with a very visual kind of storytelling. Alas, this intro was also the highlight for me. 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.

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To return to Chung; I couldn't help but ask is she also relying on the wow factor - to gain attention and notoriety? Her work is described as innovative, genre defying, an exuberant mix of styles - but IS IT ART? The stories effectively mix genres (anti-realist would perhaps be a good label) and also horror with humour. I generally rely on Anton in these matters and listen to his opinion because I was trained to operate in the academic field. I think I stayed in academia for too long and lost all sense of the real world. I’m still learning and finding my way around the publishing world. CHUNG: It's less dangerous if you are aware that you're never going to understand this. I think Isaac Asimov said something to that effect. But as long as we believe that we are gods, that we've created this, so this thing will always listen to me and do as I say, then we are walking into deeper trouble.