Cursed Bunny: Stories

With three novels and three story collections to her name, Chung is a celebrated writer of speculative fiction from South Korea. She has won several awards throughout her career, including the Yonsei Literature Prize and the Gwacheon Science Center SF Awards.

Chung draws heavily from the traditions of Korean mythology and European fairy tales, the latter of which formed part of her study of Slavic literature as a graduate researcher. Chung has also cited Russian writer Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Polish writer Bruno Schulz, and Korean writer Wan-Suh Park as influences on her work, allowing her to invest her stories with a lens that is both feminist and surrealist.

Chung’s authorial style is defined by her affinity for strange premises, which manifest as normalized features of the worlds in which her stories are set. Often, this results in characters having muted reactions to the elements that stand out as speculative. Chung uses the tension between the characters’ reactions and the expectation of how the reader might react to the same element to draw out the social commentary in her stories.

Consequently, many of the stories in Cursed Bunny feature characters who immediately accept that their personal challenges are being caused by unusual forces ranging from heads in toilets to animals that bleed gold.