Cursed Bunny: Shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize

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Primary Chronicles. It is often known as the Russian Primary Chronicles but it is mainly centred in Kyiv and is in fact the history of all the East Slavs (modern-day Ukraine, Russia and Belarus). I especially love the figure of Princess Olga of Kyiv. She is depicted in the Chronicles first and foremost as an outstanding military leader who successfully defeated invading foreign forces. (Kyivan ladies are not to be messed with). By reading her story I learned how to describe fierce female characters who are formidable warriors and great leaders at the same time.

You would, obviously,” she said, “but why are you in my toilet? And why are you calling me ‘mother’?” Cursed Bunny is a creepy good time with something for everyone if only you dare to enter Bora Chung’s nightmares. For those curious, her award winning story The Head can be read here. These sharp social critiques and eerie stories are so well balanced and so much fun, I certainly will be thinking about them for a long time to come. Especially on dark and stormy nights… Now there are ten stories in this collection, but I’m not going to discuss all of them in this review—that’s something for another time. I’m going to focus in and pinpoint the stories I found most interesting and had values I could take away with, so let us delve a bit deeper, shall we?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. the only two times i've felt patriotic this year are when i saw kim soo hyun on the street and also when i read frozen finger from this collection. 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. 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.

Tower, translated by Sang Ryu from the original 타워 by 배명훈 (Bae Myung-hoon) - my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... The first Korean speculative fiction to be longlisted for the Booker Prize, Cursed Bunny was first published by a tiny independent Korean publisher specializing in SF and then the English translation was published by a tiny independent British publisher and I am so very proud of Arzak and Honford Star. And I am eternally grateful to Anton Hur for all his efforts and achievements. The greatest horrors are the ones that feel very close to everyday reality and tend to revolve around the evils people can put others through, particularly for their own benefit. Scars covers an age-old trope of human sacrifice for a community as well as enslavement and abuse of an innocent child for profit, while Cursed Bunny (one of the most sinister good times in the whole book) is a revenge tale against a corporate CEO for having used his position of power and privilege to destroy a struggling family. The final story, Reunion, best exemplifies a theme that is an undercurrent of many of these stories: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: This layout of the human mouth was hanging on the wall. I remember the five basic tastes that the human tongue can discern, written around the picture of the tongue. I was maybe five or six. 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. 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 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]

Aside from that, each narrative focuses on human values such as greed, power, money, and gain, and each concludes with a message. a bunch of my favorite subjects in one: ghosts, sadness, the meaning of life, people-watching, lovers. Okay, allllllllright. This one had potential. It is eerie, atmospheric, and unsettling. Confusing though. But I actually really enjoyed it........dammnit. 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. A new creation by the author of Severance, the stories in Bliss Montage crash through our carefully built miragesBora Chung Soars with a provocative collection of stories. ...remarkable... The 10 stories are beyond imagination: breathtaking, wild, crazy, the most original fiction I have ever encountered. …each more astounding than the last.”