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2 months ago | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Bora Chung |Mandana Chaffa |Elete Nelson-Fearon
When her little sister said she was going to become a machine, Sang was against it. This was around the time when the new billionaire fad was sending manned and unmanned spacecraft into space for fun, and the news was reporting on the possible discovery of life on other planets. The billionaires’ companies that had made them billionaires were all preparing for a transhuman era where people could exist beyond space, and were advertising the fact.
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2 months ago | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Mandana Chaffa |Bora Chung |Kyung-sook Shin |Elete Nelson-Fearon
Award-winning translator Anton Hur can add another achievement to his vita: successful novelist. Toward Eternity is an ambitious, rewarding, and dazzling meditation on the intersections of biology and technology, mortality and eternity, and collective and individual memory, as well as the meaning and necessity of art, and love.
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Dec 3, 2024 | 
nytimes.com | Bora Chung
This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Point: South Korea announced plans to create a ministry to address its low birthrate, which Yoon Suk Yeol, the country's president, called a "national emergency." Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page. At a time when birthrates around the world are falling, South Korea stands apart.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
time.com | Shannon Carlin |Bora Chung
These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser. By Shannon CarlinNovember 13, 2024 8:22 AM ESTYour Utopia, Bora Chung’s 2021 collection of short stories, uses horror and humor to tackle the fate of humanity.
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Jul 19, 2024 | 
thebookerprizes.com | Bora Chung |Anton Hur |Ali Smith |Urszula Honek
Crafting a compelling short story is a formidable task – it takes a special skill to create a world that instantly captivates readers within the confines of a compact literary form. ‘Short stories consume you faster,’ said the Booker Prize-nominated Ali Smith, the author of five short story collections. ‘They’re connected to brevity.
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Jun 6, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Cho yeeun |Bora Chung |Anton Hur |Ananda Devi
It was a summer night when Okju met Pomegranate, hardly twenty days after her husband’s burial. She was returning home from work, where she’d boiled pork for funeral attendees as usual, the gamey odor soaking her fingertips, the distinct scent of funeral halls clinging to her thin, nylon cardigan. It was sweltering outside, the heat of the asphalt traveling up her feet with every step.
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May 31, 2024 | 
artreview.com | Bora Chung |Yuwen Jiang
In Chung’s short stories, to survive and outlive is to encounter loss and solitudeBora Chung’s second compilation of short stories begins with a normal office drama, in which the main character, a low-level employee at the ‘Center for Immortality Research’, goes about preparing for the centre’s anniversary party. With its cranky humour and a storyline teeming with familiar bureaucratic ironies, the tale feels like an outlier to the seven macabre, apocalyptic sci-fis that follow.
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May 10, 2024 | 
thebookerprizes.com | Anton Hur |Yoko Ogawa |Bora Chung
In Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold, translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, a quiet cafe offers its customers an unusual menu item: the chance to go back to a moment in time, where they might right wrongs, find comfort or see a loved one for the last time. Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a gently moving book about grief, love and time. It’s so gentle, in fact, that very little about it screams ‘bestseller’, but that’s exactly what it is, both in Japan and overseas.
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Mar 14, 2024 | 
telegraphindia.com | Bora Chung
YOUR UTOPIA By Bora Chung Hachette, Rs 599 Bora Chung’s latest short-story collection, in Anton Hur’s translation, comprises eight thrilling stories of science, madness, revolution, and horror. The stakes get raised from the very first story, “The Center for Immortality Research”. A “lowest of the low” employee hears of a colleague being stalked.
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Mar 12, 2024 | 
audiofilemagazine.com | Bora Chung
Greta Jung narrates a collection of surreal fable-like stories translated from the original Korean. They hold a warped mirror up to contemporary life. From the first story, a bizarre and dark tone is set as a young woman is confronted and haunted by a horrific animated head that rises into her toilet from the sewers. None of the stories are similar, and Jung maintains the sense of strangeness as each examines the stomach-turning evils besetting contemporary life.
