A girl whose brother feeds on her blood, robots that take revenge on their owner and a bunny lamp with a deadly curse. Those are some of the bizarre, twisted plot lines in "Cursed Bunny," Bora Chung's first collection of short stories to appear in English, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. It was translated from Korean by Anton Hur. Author Bora Chung joins us now to talk about her collection. Welcome to the show.

It was probably more accurate to refer to it as “a thing that vaguely looks like a head” than an actual head. It was about two-thirds the size of an adult’s head and resembled a lump of carelessly slapped-together yellow and gray clay, with a few scattered clumps of wet hair. No ears, no eyebrows. Two slits for eyes so narrow that she couldn’t tell if its eyes were open or closed. The crushed mound beneath was meant to be its nose. The mouth was also a lipless slit. Its strained speech mixed with the gurgling of a person drowning, making it difficult to understand. Scars” opens with the kidnapping of a nameless child, who is tossed into a cave. There he is ravaged by a bird-like monster that sinks its beak into his spine to feed, leaving behind hideous triangular scars. The boy grows up in the lightless void before managing to escape. But he’s immediately captured by an unscrupulous bald man who has him fight rabid dogs in an arena. From there … well, things don’t get any better.

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To return to Chung; I couldn't help but ask is she also relying on the wow factor - to gain attention and notoriety? Her work is described as innovative, genre defying, an exuberant mix of styles - but IS IT ART? WWB: The two of you have collaborated again on the forthcoming Your Utopia. How did that process differ from Cursed Bunny?

Haven’t finished reading: Janusz Zajdel was a Polish nuclear physicist and a SF writer with an amazing dystopian vision. I started reading his novel entitled Van Troff’s Cylinder ( Cylinder Van Troffa, 1980) but then I started translating other Polish books at the same time and got busy with deadline etc and had to stop reading and focus on the translation first. This happens all the time. But I was translating Polish books at the time so Zajdel would’ve understood, I hope. Should really finish the Cylinder though. 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 liked the kind of sharp critique creeping through this intro, along with a very visual kind of storytelling. Alas, this intro was also the highlight for me. i was trying to eat a Delicious Treat while reading it between conference calls, and i was delivered a cosmic punishment i do not feel i deserved.The Head” follows a woman haunted by her own bodily waste. “The Embodiment” takes us into a dystopian gynecology office where a pregnant woman is told that she must find a father for her baby or face horrific consequences. Another story follows a young monster, forced into underground fight rings without knowing his own power. The titular fable centers on a cursed lamp in the shape of a rabbit, fit for a child’s bedroom but for its sinister capabilities. RASCOE: Thank you for joining us. So you've described these stories as, quote, "like a fairy tale but with a little bit of a Korean twist." Can you talk about what that means? They definitely felt like fairy tales to me. That’s the mood that would capture the vibe of the short stories perfectly, as they’re like horrific little fairytales that can really make you squeamish. That’s my warning going into this: you’re going to find some content in this book that may make you a little nauseous, so if you’re someone not into the grotesque, this isn’t the book for you at all. These Slavic influences are ripe within Cursed Bunny, but more on that later. What also drew me into this book specifically was the cover: it screams danger and as if something were to leap out of you from some surreal dreamscape.