Your Utopia

by Bora Chung, Anton Hur (Translator)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A new collection of stories from Bora Chung, which should be all you need to know to get on board. These chilling, horror-ish tales are just literary enough to leave a substantial lasting impression.

"Chung builds out her stories with imagination, absurdity and a dry sense of humor, all applied with X-Acto knife precision." ―Alexandra Kleeman, The New York Times Book Review

“Bora Chung’s stories glisten at the border of our weird world, and all our other weird worlds. A truly sublime book.” ―Samantha Hunt, bestselling author of The Seas and The Unwritten Book

From the acclaimed author and translator of the National Book Award Finalist, Cursed Bunny, a fresh, uncanny, and utterly profound collection of stories set in near and distant futures that reflect our deepest fears—and deepest desires.
 
Bora Chung’s inimitable blend of horror, absurdity, and dark humor reaches its peak in these tales of loss and discovery, dystopia and idealism, death and immortality. In a thrilling translation by the acclaimed Anton Hur, readers will experience a variety of possible fates for humanity, from total demise via a disease whose only symptom is casual cannibalism to a world in which even dreams can be monitored and used to convict people of crimes.

In “The Center for Immortality Research,” a low-level employee runs herself ragged planning a fancy gala for donors only to be blamed for the chaos that ensues during the event in front of the mysterious celebrity benefactors hoping to live forever. In “A Song for Sleep,” an AI elevator in an apartment complex develops a tender, one-sided love for an elderly resident. “Seed” traverses the final frontier of capitalism’s destruction of the planet—but nature always creeps back to life.

If you haven’t yet experienced the fruits of Chung’s singular imagination, Your Utopia is waiting.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643756219
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	01/30/2024
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	98,754
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Bora Chung is a writer and translator whose works include the National Book Award finalist and International Booker Prize-shortlisted Cursed Bunny. She has an MA in Russian Studies from Yale University and a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University. She has taught Russian language and literature and science fiction at Yonsei University and translates modern literary works from Russian and Polish into Korean. 

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/18/2023

Booker Prize–shortlisted Chung (Cursed Bunny) makes a dazzling return with these eight inventive tales. The collection opens with “The Center for Immortality Research,” which imagines bureaucracy, hierarchy, and capitalism continuing on for eternity. In “A Very Ordinary Marriage,” a man’s suspicions about his wife’s late night phone calls leads him down an uncanny rabbit hole. The standout title story examines a future in which artificial intelligence is all that remains on Earth. An autonomous vehicle travels aimlessly through this landscape, carrying a flawed humanoid robot that endlessly repeats variations of the same question—until a new variation of the question becomes a warning. Hur’s skillful translation feels authentic to Chung’s voice without an ounce of pandering to a potentially unaware Western audience. The author has an impressive ability to balance emotional and psychological depth with a touch of the surreal, creating a collection that resonates long after the final page is turned. A literary force to be reckoned with, Chung makes another splash. Agent: Jinhee Park, Greenbook Literary. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by The Millions, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Book Riot, and Marie Claire. 

"Best Books this Week" on Shelf Awareness 

Included in This Week's (3/21/24) Editors' Choice of the "7 New Books We Recommend This Week" by New York Times Book Review——

“Bora Chung’s stories glisten at the border of our weird world, and all our other weird worlds. A truly sublime book.”—Samantha Hunt, bestselling author of The Seas and The Unwritten Book

“Chung builds out her stories with imagination, absurdity and a dry sense of humor, all applied with X-Acto knife precision”—New York Times Book Review

“Chung has crafted another weird and surprising story collection…Central to the collection is an exploration of loneliness and isolation, but Chung is far too complex a writer to simply blame technology for these shortcomings… She plays with our expectations of the future, experiments with the possibilities of what could be, and sprinkles in elements from other genres to keep the stories fresh.”—Chicago Review of Books

"[An] impressive second collection... Through the prism of her singular imagination, Chung looks sharply at the ways the world we’ve made doesn’t suit us...These are stories to sit with, to read one at a time and savor.”—Esquire's Best Sci-Fi Books of 2024 (So Far)

"Unexpected, funny, thrillingly original. These stories will stick with me."—Ainslie Hogarth, author of the New York Times Best Book of the Year, Motherthing, and Normal Women

“Bora Chung has proven once again that she is an undeniable maestro of the uncanny, grotesque, and posthuman. Only a consummate speculative allegorist could write a collection that functions as so haunting a mirror of our modern world, reminding us all the while that the politely deranged cannibals and lovesick AIs and beleaguered alien wives we see reflected in that mirror are really just versions of ourselves.”—Rafael Frumkin, author of Confidence and The Comedown

“Imagining a utopia and mourning when it falls short are the first steps toward creating a better world. A big job for fiction; Chung’s up to the task. The imagined worlds here may not be utopian—but the reading experience is.”—Kirkus Reviews

“This is another fantastic collection...that combines big topics such as technology, human absurdity, and mortality. And [Chung] does it in the most amazing ways.”—Book Riot

“Such a fun collection of short stories infused with speculative tendencies, Slavic literary traditions, and extremely relatable pandemic-era fears.”—Jennifer Croft, Los Angeles Daily News

“Hur returns as Chung’s brilliant Korean-to-English cipher for eight more enigmatically irresistible stories… Chung’s electrifying author’s note offers provenance for many of her stories and an empathic invitation to progress 'toward a better world for both you and me.'” *STARRED REVIEW*—Booklist

“A gut-punch reminder of our own humanity or lack thereof. It urges readers not only to be kinder, but also to be wide-eyed about the technological world around them. This is a book to slip into your friend’s hand with a knowing nod and a wordless 'trust me' implied.”​—Scientific American

“Uncanny atmospheres and heartfelt human insights strike an unlikely balance… Chung lingers tenderly with the emotional depths of her stories, which arise almost unexpectedly as her characters navigate surreal, speculative, and often mundanely horrifying horizons.”—Shelf Awareness

"Chung’s distinctive imagination remains delightfully compelling... Chung’s stories eschew techno-pessimism and suggest that empathy and heart are what is missing from discussions about technology’s role in our future."—The Georgetown Voice

“If you are looking for stories that are reminiscent of 'Black Mirror' or that peek into the unknown, surrounding, burgeoning AI and make one generally question what it means to be human, then Your Utopia is for you."—Bookreporter.com

"Bora Chung is a writer rich in ideas with an impressive power of controlled narration and tone. Everything is thoughtful and quiet, even amid horrifying details." —The Arts Fuse

"Your Utopia deftly interrogates what it means to be human."—The Georgetown Voice

“Fans of Korean author Bora Chung’s strangely fantastic and weirdly dystopian—sometimes horrific—tales are in for a treat…Your Utopia will leave readers uncomfortable yet yearning for more. Thought-provoking and bound to take readers through a wild ride of emotions and experiences.”—International Examiner

From the Publisher

Greta Jung performs these science-fiction stories from National Book Award finalists Bora Chung and translator Anton Hur. In one story, an elevator falls in love with one of the residents in its building. In another story, a robot tries to survive in a postapocalyptic world in which humans are nearly extinct. Jung narrates the audiobook with deep understanding of the characters in every story. She's especially strong in first-person narration; she perfectly embodies each protagonist's point of view--whether they're human or robot. At times, Jung's voice falls into an affectless tone, disconnecting listeners from the stories with third-person perspectives. But overall, she creates an engrossing listening experience that's sure to mesmerize her listeners. K.D.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2024 - AudioFile

★ 2024-01-05
Science fiction blends with pointed social critique in these short stories from South Korea.

In 2022, Chung’s first collection to appear in English, Cursed Bunny, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. These eight stories pick up where that book left off, using darkly speculative premises—with surprising flashes of wry humor—to explore social ills. Where Chung’s debut skewed toward fairy tale–infused horror, these stories are full of SF staples: spaceships, robots, futuristic technologies. In the opener, “The Center for Immortality Research,” a low-level employee at the eponymous facility has to pull off a “ninety-eighth anniversary celebration.” When things go awry, the worker is hit by the hard truth of their employer’s mission. In “The End of the Voyage,” a Department of Defense linguist on a space mission designed to outrun a cannibalistic virus on Earth discovers she has the world’s worst co-workers. The title story is narrated by a piece of “inorganic intelligence,” a solar-powered “autobody” whose human occupant has perished (along with the rest of his species) in a cataclysmic virus—viruses pop up numerous times in these tales; no surprise, given the book originally appeared in Korea in 2021—and who now faces a series of obstacles for its own survival. In the poignant “Maria, Gratia Plena,” a worker scanning a comatose criminal’s brain for memories discovers, instead of clues to her crimes, a haunting past. In an author’s note, Chung says that “loss and trauma are the only common elements of human life,” which explains the book’s melancholy. But she also notes that the acts of imagining a utopia and mourning when it falls short are the first steps toward creating a better world. A big job for fiction; Chung’s up to the task.

The imagined worlds here may not be utopian—but the reading experience is.

Kirkus Reviews