Cursed Bunny: Stories

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Now a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Fiction. Winners announced Nov 15th** Okay, allllllllright. This one had potential. It is eerie, atmospheric, and unsettling. Confusing though. But I actually really enjoyed it........dammnit. 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. The stories effectively mix genres (anti-realist would perhaps be a good label) and also horror with humour.

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.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. Cursed Bunny delivers strange and bizarre fables and, through these often grotesque fairy tales, articulates a clear critique of humanity. These are not childhood bedtime stories, but morality tales; sinners are punished. It is a collection that reminds us there are monsters everywhere, even in plain sight, even if we can’t see them.’ Basically, I decided while standing there at the book fair that I wanted to translate this book. So I asked the person who was selling the book, I would like to meet the author or the publisher of this book because I want to ask them for translation rights. The person who was selling the books happened to be Bora Chung herself, who was helping out at the booth at the time. So I feel like it was fate. It was fate that I translated this book. 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. 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.

There are a couple of Grimm-like fables, Snare being a most disquieting effort about a fox that bleeds gold. Unfortunately, the longest story in the book Scars is also the most tedious one, an M. Night Shyamalan type thing about a boy sacrificed to a monster to save a village. The Head strained as it formed its unpracticed speech with its lipless mouth. “My body was created with the things you dumped down the toilet, like your fallen-out hair and the feces you wiped off your behind.

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If the aesthetics of the book are the only thing of quality, think again; Cursed Bunny, is without any doubt, THE best short story collection I have read in a long time. South Korea’s Bora Chung’s short stories are brimming with horror, fairy tale elements and great doses of weirdness. This is a world where heads emerge from toilets, orphans acquire unknown superpowers, rabbits cause financial ruin and foxes bleed gold. The expected conclusion has its pleasures. But Chung’s writing is stronger when she leans toward literary fiction’s more open forms and pursues odder ends. In “The Head,” a young woman finds a disembodied head in her toilet, which claims to be the product of her waste. In “The Embodiment,” another young woman takes too many birth control pills and ends up becoming pregnant. 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. The first two stories will grab your attention and probably determine if you set the book aside or not. The first is about a haunted toilet ( The Head ) I only want so little,” said the Head hastily, “I’m only asking that you keep dumping your body waste in the toilet so I can finish the rest of my body. Then I’ll go far away from here and live by my own means, so please, just keep using the toilet like you always have.”

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. WWB: What particular translation challenges arose as Cursed Bunny was brought into English? Were they points that the author anticipated, or was there something of a process of discovery in which the author found that the translator shed light on unexpected aspects of the original-language work? 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. 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.

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. 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.