Read This Book…

Last year, I picked up Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur. The stories were delightfully creepy, like dark, horror-esque fairytales. The contents of a woman’s toilet come alive, and calls the woman “mother.” In another, a cursed bunny lamp leads to the downfall of a powerful family. It’s so good; no wonder it was named a finalist for the National Book Award in translation. So when I picked up Your Utopia, I expected more of the same. But instead of giving readers more fable-like stories, she decided to show her range.

As much as Cursed Bunny was magical, Your Utopia’s stories are science fiction. In one story, an elevator of an apartment building falls in love with one of its residents. In another story, a woman is forced to endure the endless mundane tasks that go with organizing an anniversary event for her company, and she wants to quit. But she can’t, and neither can any of the other employees. (I am dancing around spoilers!) In one of my favorite stories, we follow a group of growers trying to maintain their independence from companies who’ve genetically modified crops and now own the copyright to any plants grown from those seeds. But the growers are determined to keep their plants out of the hands of greedy companies.

These stories contain the same dark playfulness that drew me to Cursed Bunny. They are whimsical while also possessing intense depth at the same time. I’ve rarely read stories so uniquely their own thing. Your Utopia examines ideas around technology and environmentalism, always returning to ideas around what makes us human. And, like all of his other translation work, Anton Hur’s translation of the stories reads so beautifully. Chung and Hur seem to work so well together; I hope Hur continues to translate Chung’s work in the future.