Cursed Bunny: Shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize

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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

You would, obviously,” she said, “but why are you in my toilet? And why are you calling me ‘mother’?” Male power is a consistent theme in Chung’s stories. Powerful men – both those born powerful, and those who become so – will stop at nothing to retain that power. In the twisted fairy tale Snare, a man finds a fox caught in a trap. The fox bleeds gold, so the man takes her home to make his fortune. Arguably the most disturbing of all the stories, Snare persists down a dark path of blood-drinking, child abuse, and incest, leading to a visceral end. The story leans heavily again on the abuse and dismissal of women (the fox begs for mercy in a woman’s voice then never speaks again). However, Chung also explores the effect such behaviours have on other men. In the title story, a CEO, cursed by the vengeful friend of a man once crossed, is concerned only with success and lineage; a hospitalised son is ‘worthless’ to him. Cursed Bunny sees Bora Chung employ and then amplify absurdly horrific levels of familiar tropes found in horror. For example, women’s fears and concerns have been ignored since the dawn of the genre, and the protagonists of Chung’s stories fare no better. In The Head, a woman is advised to simply ignore the sentient severed head found living in her toilet bowl. Healthcare professionals criticise and dismiss Young-lan in The Embodiment when she experiences side effects from birth control pills. In both instances, these women are expected either to ignore their problems or to deal with them alone. Chung further takes the expectations placed on women – to find a husband, to have children, to run a household – and observes them through an uncanny lens.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’ Una variada colección de cuentos cortos por Bora Chung. La portada fue suficiente razón para aventurarme. Algunos muy lindos hallazgos, otros no tanto. El inodoro ya no es el lugar seguro que alguna vez conocí, y nunca voy a tocar una lámpara con forma de conejo, no importa qué. Un gran comienzo con unas verdaderamente sobresalientes historias, el impulso gradualmente disminuyendo hasta que para el final solo deseaba terminar para seguir con otra cosa. It was probably more accurate to refer to it as “a thing that vaguely looks like a head” than an actual head. It was about two-thirds the size of an adult’s head and resembled a lump of carelessly slapped-together yellow and gray clay, with a few scattered clumps of wet hair. No ears, no eyebrows. Two slits for eyes so narrow that she couldn’t tell if its eyes were open or closed. The crushed mound beneath was meant to be its nose. The mouth was also a lipless slit. Its strained speech mixed with the gurgling of a person drowning, making it difficult to understand. 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?

Book Genre: Adult, Anthologies, Asia, Asian Literature, Cultural, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Literature, Magical Realism, Science Fiction, Short Stories These Slavic influences are ripe within Cursed Bunny, but more on that later. What also drew me into this book specifically was the cover: it screams danger and as if something were to leap out of you from some surreal dreamscape. The scatological and profane swim together in Cursed Bunny. Originally published in 2017, this is South Korean author Bora Chung’s first work to be translated into English. Chung takes aim at capitalism, misogyny and the social obsessions with youth and beauty through these stories, which fluidly cross genres from science fiction to traditional fable structures. Capitalism is nothing before the forces of love and passion!” So declares an impossibly pregnant woman’s stalker in The Embodiment, the second story in this intricate puzzle box of a collection from Korean author Bora Chung. Cursed Bunny offers 10 stories of capitalist corruption, misogyny, and patriarchy: ghost stories, speculative fiction, and darkly comic fairy tales served twitching and bloody on a satirical plate. Specialising in contemporary and classic East Asian literature, Honford Star is the perfect publisher for Chung’s masterful surrealist storytelling. One of the most captivating short stories that describes the complex emotions of selfishness, greed, and revenge is titled, “Cursed Bunny.” The story is told through the lens of a grandson whose grandfather repeatedly tells him the story of a “cursed bunny.” The story revolves around a cursed bunny lamp that was made for the grandfather’s friend. According to the grandfather, his friend’s distillery company was ruined by a greedy competitor who spread lies about their drinks. The grandfather explains that “they claimed that anyone who drank [their drinks] would become blind, lame, or even fatally poisoned. Sales for my grandfather’s friend took a nosedive.”I have been wanting to read Cursed Bunny ever since I heard that it was coming out. How I specifically had heard about this one was that Anton Hur was translating it, and I really like Anton Hur’s translations. 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. 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.

Finally, I want to congratulate the translator Anton Hur for having two of his works longlisted this year. Love in the Big City is the other one, which I also enjoyed. 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. 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.Godammnit! I liked this one. It's about greed and how everything has a price. I was gasping at the twists in this short story. Bora Chung is quite impressive. The South Korean author has a PhD in Slavic literature and teaches Russian language and literature and science fiction studies at Yonsei University. She also translates Russian and Polish into Korean while having written three novels and story collections. Anton Hur is always great, having been awarded a PEN/Heim grant. The love of language from both of them certainly comes through in this collection. 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.

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. The human body begins to decline dramatically at the age of sixty, but they live on for ten, twenty, even thirty more years. We were developed to aid such humans and enhance their quality of life… Just a few replacement parts or a software upgrade could help us serve you for a decade longer, but we’re treated like trash as soon as there is a new model.”The author’s own take on the collection explains how the characters, be that people, robots or rabbits, are typically alone and coping with a wild, unfamiliar, at times beautiful but at other times barbaric world: