Cursed Bunny: Stories

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RASCOE: But this one will have a happy ending because this is a great book. This is a beautiful book, and I don't say that lightly. So this will have a good ending. In “The Head,” the first story of the collection, a woman is haunted by a floating head who lives in her toilet. The head explains how it came to be from the woman’s discarded waste. The head is a haunted image, resembling “a lump of carelessly slapped-together yellow and grey clay, with a few scattered clumps of wet hair. No ears, no eyebrows. Two slits for eyes.” The repulsive-looking head is the product of feces and clumps of hair. The head follows the woman wherever she goes through the sewer system, manifesting whenever she uses a toilet.

The human body begins to decline dramatically at the age of sixty, but they live on for ten, twenty, even thirty more years. We were developed to aid such humans and enhance their quality of life… Just a few replacement parts or a software upgrade could help us serve you for a decade longer, but we’re treated like trash as soon as there is a new model.” 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:The book is the debut short story collection by the Korean author, Bora Chung. I’ve had this strange book on my radar before it was longlisted for the Booker. A few of my GR friends raved about it and it prompted me to read a sample story I found on the internet. The story is called The Embodiment, a harrowing example of body horror and it still one of my favorites from the collection. 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. Grandfather used to say, “When we make our cursed fetishes, it’s important that they’re pretty.” - Cursed Bunny. 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?

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] One of the things I liked most was the genre-bending aspect of the short stories in Cursed Bunny. For instance, Goodbye my love has some elements of science fiction, Scars of fantasy, Reunion of a ghost and love story, Snare of a myth or fairytale. Interestingly, Bora Chung's stories showcase even level which is not often the case in collections. As for my personal preferences, the closer to magical realism or fantasy and farther from typical horror, the better. The two stories which I liked the best are Scars and Ruler of the Winds and Sands. There was a big potential in Snare also but it turned out too dark for my liking. Oddly, the title story, Cursed Bunny, appealed to me the least. An added bonus for me: Reunion is set in an unnamed city in Poland which resembles Cracow and there are even some sentences in Polish. That’s the mood that would capture the vibe of the short stories perfectly, as they’re like horrific little fairytales that can really make you squeamish. That’s my warning going into this: you’re going to find some content in this book that may make you a little nauseous, so if you’re someone not into the grotesque, this isn’t the book for you at all. BC: Cursed Bunny was our first collaboration. Afterwards Anton tried really hard to promote me, and it worked. He published “The Head” in the online magazine Samovar and published another short story entitled “The Mask” in Valancourt Book of Horror, Vol. II. It was fun.Cursed Bunny is a collection of short stories inspired by Russian and Slavic fairytales, blending magic and horror to teach some critical lessons.