Cursed Bunny: Stories

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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. Contents The Head The Embodiment Cursed Bunny The Frozen Finger Snare Goodbye, My Love Scars Home Sweet Home Ruler of the Winds and Sands Reunion

Few story collections greet their reader with an introductory sequence as disarmingly gross as the one in “Cursed Bunny.” “The Head” begins:It is published by Honford Star whose mission is to publish the best literature from East Asia, be it classic or contemporary ... By working with talented translators and exciting local artists, we hope to see more bookshelves containing beautiful editions of the East Asian literature we love. Grotesque monsters often serve as villains in children’s fairy tales. The monsters in Bora Chung’s story collection, Cursed Bunny, translated by Anton Hur, are sometimes less obvious, but not less terrifying. The stories defy conventional categorization. They range from horror to fantasy to slightly supernatural, with the individual stories varying in how they integrate a mix of those elements into modern fables and parables.

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. Among non-Korean writers, Polish writers Bruno Schulz (1892-1942), Bruno Jasienski (1901-1938 or 1940), and Russian writers Andrei Platonov (1899-1951) and Lyudmila Petrushevskaya (1938-). Jasienski and Platonov were both revolutionaries, in reality and in art, who focused on the human experience of pain, suffering and loss. Bruno Schulz is magical; he paints delicate and dream-like pictures in words and his stories read like a beautiful labyrinth. Petrushevskaya shows how women struggle in an unjust society, how women are human beings with all our strength and weakness and flaws and hopes and despairs, and how women live and survive. Her stories are breathtaking.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.

BRIANNA HIRAMI WRITES — You may have been able to guess by the eerie-looking bunny presented in inverted colors on the cover that this tale is anything but light and happy. Bora Chung’s fascinating and unique short story collection, Cursed Bunny , displays the most disturbing truths about the nature of mankind through a fantastical yet realistic narrative. By including ten short stories, Chung is easily able to capture the reader’s full attention by making her audience feel disgusted and uncomfortable, yet highly intrigued and captivated. This slender beast of a book contains many themes that leave a lasting impression on the reader that may cause them to need a deep breath – and maybe even a drink – between stories. RASCOE: That was Bora Chung, author of the short story collection "Cursed Bunny." Thank you so much for joining us. 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.

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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. WWB: The two of you have collaborated again on the forthcoming Your Utopia. How did that process differ from Cursed Bunny?