Title: Cursed Bunny
Author: Bora Chung
Dates read: 09/08/26 – 01/09/26
Rating 4/5
Publisher: Honford Star
Number of pages: 251
Fiction or non-fiction: fiction
Subject or genre: contemporary, horror, literary, magical realism, science fiction, short stories
Book blurb:
Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung.
Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.
Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous
How I discovered or acquired this book: Chosen for a ‘A short story collection in translation ‘ prompt in a reading challenge
Notable quotes “If I could make one wish
I want to be just a little happier
If I’m too happy
I will miss the sadness”
Cursed Bunny is weird. Deeply, deliberately, occasionally disgustingly weird. And I mean that as a compliment.
This collection moves between horror, speculative fiction, fairy tale, surrealism and outright absurdity, often within the same story. Bora Chung takes seemingly simple premises and twists them into something increasingly unsettling, and I very quickly learned that I had absolutely no idea where any given story was going to end up.
There’s a dark humour running through the collection that I really enjoyed, particularly because so much of the horror comes from recognisable human behaviour. Greed, capitalism, misogyny, exploitation, loneliness and revenge crop up again and again, transformed into curses, monsters and situations that become increasingly bizarre.
And some of it is gross. Impressively gross. There were definitely moments where my reaction was essentially, “Bora. Why.”
But beneath all that strangeness, there’s a real sharpness to the writing. The stories often have the logic of old fairy tales: terrible things happen, people make terrible choices, and consequences arrive in forms that are grotesque, disproportionate and somehow completely appropriate.
As with almost every short-story collection, I didn’t connect equally with everything. Some stories grabbed me immediately and stayed with me afterwards, while others felt more distant or lost me somewhere in their surrealism. But even the ones I liked less were rarely predictable.
4/5 for a collection that was inventive, disturbing, funny, uncomfortable and unlike pretty much anything else I’ve read recently.