2021 is the year that restored my belief in short stories. However, although I´ve read a couple of good collections and do still have some volumes that I hope to go through until the end of the year, it will take a very very long time until I will find a book to compete with Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung (translated from Korean by Anton Hur), published by Honford Star, an edition house dedicated to promoting East Asian authors on the English-speaking market.
´What the bloody hell are you´ the woman demanded.
´I call myself the head´, the head replied.
If someone will be curious enough to find out what exactly is so extraordinary about this collection of short story, I cannot give a classical, textbook-like answer. I´ve read it last afternoon and night, completely immersed and uninterested to hear, see and think about anything else but the stories. For someone who is super active - with a accent on super - this was a high achievement. But the truth is that I haven´t read something like this in a very long time.
I hate labels, of any kind, particularly in literature, but some books, many of them, invite you to label them. Not the Cursed Bunny. Not at all. There are fragments of children stories, magic realism, black magic - ´Never make a cursed fetish for personal reasons. Never use a handmade object in a personal curse. There are reasons for these unwritten rules´ - horror, even a science fiction (that vaguely reminded me of Love Death+Robots). Just like a surrealist painting - plus some Dali, plus some Dadaism - it pushed the limits of imagination. It shocks and confronts your fears, greediness and secret violent dreams. It takes you with two strong hands out of your comfy couch and threw you in the vortex of worlds and after worlds.
Writing can bring so much magic - black or bloody red or with sparkles and gold - to the brain.
Rating: 5 stars
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