Bora Chung in conversation with Bruno Galindo

"This entire world that I’m living in is a giant set of confusions, and I describe the world as I see it, so my stories come out as confusing and dark," says Bora Chung of her work - to date, three novels and three books of short stories. The latest, Cursed Bunny (shortly to be published in Spanish by Alpha Decay), is the first Korean work of speculative fiction ever to be shortlisted for the International Booker Prize (2022). 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, according to the jury of the prestigious British prize.

A father who locks up his daughter and exploits her to make money, a designer who falls in love with a robot companion she herself has invented, and a woman who becomes pregnant and then feels constantly embarrassed due to the side effects of her birth control pills. All of them are the protagonists of a collection of short stories that a webzine specialising in science fiction commissioned from twelve authors: an anthology based on the Asian zodiac. Chung chose the rabbit and then turned it into an absolutely terrifying creature.

Bora Chung (Seoul, 1976) graduated from the Yonsei University in Seoul (South Korea) and earned her master's degree in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Yale University (USA) and a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature from Indiana University Bloomington (USA). She has published four books of short stories and three novels, and has translated several Russian and Polish novels. She currently lives in Pohang (South Korea) with her husband. The only thing she regrets in this life is the fact that she doesn’t have a cat.

Bruno Galindo (Buenos Aires, 1968) is the author of such novels as Remake (Aristas Martínez Ediciones, 2020) and The Public (El público) (Lengua de Trapo 2012), the autobiography Landing (Toma de tierra) (Libros del KO, 2021), the musical essay Omega (The Oral History of the Album that Brought Together Enrique Morente, Lagartija Nick, Leonard Cohen and Federico García Lorca) (Lengua de Trapo 2011), the travel book Korea Diaries (Diarios de Corea) (Debate, 2007) and the poetry collection Equilateral (Editorial Esto no es Berlín, 2022), among others. He lives in Madrid with his cat.

With the collaboration of Alpha Decay and Centro de Cultura Coreano