The story here leans to the comic, with rather bemused suitors, when they realise her request, a blackmailer who says he will claim he is the father, an elderly Chaebol owner after a heir and one wannabe suitor who serenades her with Shakespeare in badly pronounced Konglish. Past misdeeds of all kinds — a careless flush, a debt unpaid, the corrupt practices of a company, the torture of an animal, an unfair exchange — resurface and haunt the present in these 10 gripping and prodigiously creepy stories. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Trauma becomes a key aspect of these stories, with characters pushed to their limits or reacting to the world around them as informed by the horrors visited upon them. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. The blurb informs that this is a 'genre-defying collection of short stories' that blur the lines between 'magical realism, horror and science-fiction,' which sounded instantly like something I would love. And the final story Reunion (재회) is set in Poland, with Polish text included (the author translates from the language) and is a love story of sorts with a ghostly twist. I don't generally enjoy short story collections as I like to spend a lot of time with fictional characters and get to know and love (or despise) them.

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. These ten stories by South Korean author Bora Chung started off with somewhat lighter, surreal, yet meaningful horror - the opening stories were just breathtaking: “The Head”, the story of a woman whose remains of all sorts, hair, skin, nails, feces assemble to form a new being; “The Embodiment”, in which a woman falls pregnant mysteriously to an even more mysterious “child”; and the titular “Cursed Bunny” in which karma finds its place through cursed objects. I needed to look away from the page now and then but I felt like cheering all the way through because Bora Chung has written something so brutal and perfect.

I think the lack of pretentious similise and metaphors gives it a feeling of bluntness to cut the author in the gut and to get them to really understand what the story is about. Few story collections greet their reader with an introductory sequence as disarmingly gross as the one in “Cursed Bunny. 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). a bunch of my favorite subjects in one: ghosts, sadness, the meaning of life, people-watching, lovers. The reason I gave it four stars instead of five is that the quality of the short tales diminished after the first five, but each story is distinctive in its own way.

Bora Chung deftly moves from haunted house stories ( Home Sweet Home) to surreal thrillers ( The Frozen Finger) to even a story about uncanny valley aspects of AI without causing the reader any whiplash (the sci-fi story, Goodbye, My Love is arguably less fresh than some but still charming). If you are a thrill seeker and have ever frequented amusement parks, then you may know that it’s best to save your favorite, most exhilarating rides for the end.

But the grotesque is always in service of the themes Chung explores - womanhood, capitalism, patriarchy, gaslighting, and others. Each entry in this collection is a fully realized story unto itself, showing Chung’s mastery of the form as her work shocks and horrifies and lodges viscerally in one’s memory. This book gave me chills several times as well as made me rather uncomfortable in ways that truly capture the power of a well-written story.

Anton Hur’s translation skillfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. 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.

The darker, more disturbing stories are at the start—mostly—and I have to say these were my favourites. These stories will make your eyes pop out with horror, make you shift uncomfortably and wonder at Bora Chung’s infinite creativity. The first two stories will grab your attention and probably determine if you set the book aside or not. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin.El inodoro ya no es el lugar seguro que alguna vez conocí, y nunca voy a tocar una lámpara con forma de conejo, no importa qué. It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance.