Scribe is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Your Utopia by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur.
16 August, 2023
A new collection from Bora Chung
Your Utopia is Chung’s second collection of short stories, and follows the success of the International Booker–shortlisted Cursed Bunny. The author describes the new collection as ’science-fiction stories that focus on nonhuman beings, machines, and artificial intelligence, in order to ask about what humanity is and what makes humans human.’
'The stories in Your Utopia, which are masterfully translated by Anton Hur, have a finely calibrated sense of the uncanny, and range from achingly tender to laugh-out-loud funny. And, as with the stories in Chung's first collection, Cursed Bunny, they never do what the reader expects. It's a brilliant follow-up,’ said acquiring publisher Marika Webb-Pullman.
On her local publication, Chung commented, ‘I am very thrilled to work again with Scribe. Cursed Bunny was received so well in Australia, and Scribe was so warm and welcoming and excited about it, and I was very grateful. I hope Australian readers like Your Utopia.’
Your Utopia will be published in February 2024.
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Your Utopia
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By the internationally acclaimed author of Cursed Bunny, in another thrilling translation from the Korean by Anton Hur, Your Utopia is full of tales of loss and discovery, idealism and dystopia, death and immortality. “Nothing concentrates the mind like Chung’s terrors, which will shrivel you to a bouillon cube of your most primal instincts” (Vulture), yet these stories are suffused with Chung's inimitable wry humour and surprisingly tender moments, too — often between unexpected subjects.
In ‘The Center for Immortality Research’, a low-level employee runs herself ragged planning a fancy gala for donors, only to be blamed for a crime she witnessed during the event, under the noses of the mysterious celebrity benefactors hoping to live forever. But she can’t be fired — no one can. In ‘A Song for Sleep’, a tender, one-sided love blooms in the AI-elevator of an apartment complex; as in, the elevator develops a profound affection for one of the residents. In ‘Seeds’, we see the final frontier of capitalism’s destruction of the planet and the GMO companies who rule the agricultural industry in this bleak future, but nature has ways of creeping back to life.
Chung’s writing is “haunting, funny, gross, terrifying — and yet when we reach the end, we just want more” (Alexander Chee). If you haven’t yet experienced the fruits of this singular imagination, Your Utopia is waiting.
