Cursed Bunny: Shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize

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I was ready to DNF after this one. This is pointless and confusing. What a long way of saying that you shouldn't spread hate because it will consume you. We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we? 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’

Thankfully, moving through the collection at a measured pace allows Hur’s straightforward translation—and the macabre scenarios that Chung creates—to feel fresh on every visit.” 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. 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. BOOK REVIEW: VERA WONG’S UNSOLICITED ADVICE FOR MURDERERS (2023) BY JESSE SUTANTO – A WHOLESOME INVESTIGATION OF THE UNCONVENTIONAL The title story Cursed Bunny (저주 토끼) begins with the quote that opens my review and tells the story of the narrator’s grandfather, who created cursed objects, such as the lamp shaped like a bunny rabbit, for his customers. In this case the cursed bunny was one he made to seek his own revenge (violating his own rules) on a company who had put a friend out of business by unscrupulous means, leading to the friend’s suicide. The lamp, once gifted to the CEO, creates chaos in the life of the CEO’s family and his business, but also with implications for the grandfather.At their best, though, these stories use a vocabulary of the grotesque to articulate truths about female bodies, living in a patriarchy, and the brutal vampiric logic of capitalism. Surprisingly, there's little sense of place in these tales which could pretty much happen anywhere - except, ironically, the last one located in Poland. You would, obviously,” she said, “but why are you in my toilet? And why are you calling me ‘mother’?” Many of these stories end with a descent into darkness or the unknown. Sometimes that’s frightening and sometimes it is a hint of something more positive to come. Just as in life, Cursed Bunny’s stories are unexpected, with both rewards and horrors to be found – sometimes at the same time. 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:

Tower, translated by Sang Ryu from the original 타워 by 배명훈 (Bae Myung-hoon) - my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...An assorted collection of short stories by Bora Chung. The cover was enough reason for me to jump into it. Some really nice finds, some not. My toilet is no longer the safe place I once knew, and I’m never touching a bunny lamp no matter what. A great start with some really outstanding stories, the momentum gradually diminishing until by the end I was just eager to finish to move on. 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.