Big Picture: Contemporary South Korea with Author Bora Chung

Between Science Fiction and the Horrors of Reality

Bora Chung has made a big entrance to the international literary scene with Cursed Bunny. Her short story collection – the first to be translated into English – was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022, and longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2023. It has been hailed as genre-defying, somewhere between horror story and science fiction, full of darkness and humor. It gives insight into modern Korean society, rendering everyday situations into miniatures of absurdity: a woman who is pregnant from taking too many contraception pills and faces pressures from society; short-lived romances with android companions; animals plaguing families over generations.

Bora Chung provides us with a take on South Korea that differs wildly from both the glittery world of K-Pop and the straightforward criticism of society as shown in the Oscar-winning movie Parasite or the hit series Squid Game. The questions she tackles range from: How to be (a woman) in contemporary South Korea? What is it like to have sense of self as a machine? Which of our actions will come back to haunt us?

Join us for a conversation and a short live reading with the author Bora Chung in Zurich.

Bora Chung is a writer of science fiction and generally unrealistic stories. She also translates modern literary works from Russian and Polish into Korean. She has published four novels and five books of collected short stories in Korean. Among them, Cursed Bunny was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize and the 2023 National Book Awards for translated literature.

Last year, Bora Chung followed up with a second collection of translated short stories,Your Utopia. This May, her novel Red Sword will be published in English, set on another planet, ravaged by war between competing empires. She lives in Pohang, South Korea.

About Big Picture

Big Picture is a public event series where we celebrate art in all its forms and shapes: be it food, movies, museums, or literature. We invite artists, curators, and experts to talk about their practices and how these can help shed light on the world we live in. These talks are designed to further the dialogue and exchange across disciplines and regions and to travel beyond the events.

Partners

The Big Picture event series is made possible with the support of Bergos.

This Big Picture event is hosted in cooperation with the Museum Rietberg.