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. Bora Chung was born in 1976, in Seoul. [1] Her parents were dentists. [2] She completed graduate studies in Russian and East European area studies at Yale University, then went on to gain a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University. [1] [3] She taught the Russian language, literature and science fiction studies at Yonsei University. [1] [4] She is a social activist. [4] These stories will make your eyes pop out with horror, make you shift uncomfortably and wonder at Bora Chung’s infinite creativity. There’s a craft to writing an awe inspiring short story and it’s definitely present here. Each story is perfect, they are unique and I highly doubt that there’s anyone writing short pieces of this standard and brain warping quality.

Goodbye My Love (안녕, 내 사랑) has a designer of artificial companions deciding it’s time to replace her first robot, and her one true love, although the androids have other ideas. The story is also noticeable for a reference to the uncanny valley concept - one that neatly summarises the collection. 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. I mustered my courage to dive into Bora Chung's collection thanks to Alan's unmissable and motivating review with succinct, informative and spoiler-free descriptions of every single short story in Cursed Bunny. I have the feeling my four-star rating for this book may be a bit overgenerous but I wanted to celebrate its uniqueness, the author's artistry at the grotesque, surrealist imagery and quirky humour evident even in the title of the collection. South Korean novelist Bora Chung’s first translated work, the short story collection Cursed Bunny is an example of the new amalgamated norm. Drawing from Korean folk tale and Chung’s expertise as a Slavic literature professor, the narratives here shamble and ooze across a porous divide between highbrow absurdism and lowbrow jump scare. The balance changes from story to story, and sometimes the genre conventions feel too pat, as genre conventions will. But the more predictable moments set you up to miss a crucial step and fall right into the abyss when Chung gets weird.’ 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.

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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. RASCOE: Thank you for joining us. So you've described these stories as, quote, "like a fairy tale but with a little bit of a Korean twist." Can you talk about what that means? They definitely felt like fairy tales to me.

Bora Chung (BC): Cursed Bunny as a collection contains stories that I wrote in different periods of my life, under various circumstances. “The Head” was written for a school contest. And I wrote the title story, “Cursed Bunny,” as a part of a New Year’s project for the web magazine Mirror. We were planning to write about the Asian zodiac but other writers took the more glamorous animals such as the dragon, the tiger, the horse, etc., and all I had left was the bunny or the sheep. I don’t know anything about sheep so I chose the bunny. So, my question like Duchamp's question when he placed a urinal, a piece of plumbing in an art gallery in New York, and called it "Fountain" - is it art? WWB: The two of you have collaborated again on the forthcoming Your Utopia. How did that process differ from Cursed Bunny? 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.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 But for 2021, their K-lit focus turns to the contemporary, in terms of authors, and the future in terms of subject matter.