Your Utopia

Translated by Anton Hur

$27.99 AUD

Your Utopia

Translated by Anton Hur

Overview

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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.

Details

Format
Paperback
Size
210mm x 135mm
Extent
256 pages
ISBN
9781761380846
RRP
AUD$27.99
Pub date
30 January 2024
Rights held
ANZ
Other rights
Honford Star

Awards

  • Shortlisted for the 2025 Philip K. Dick Award

Praise

‘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'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
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About the Author

Bora Chung is a writer of speculative fiction and a translator of contemporary Russian and Polish literature. She has published three full-length novels and four short story collections in Korean. As of 2025, five of her works have been translated by Anton Hur and published in English; the first, Cursed Bunny, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize and the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature.

more about the author 

Translator

Anton Hur was born in Stockholm and currently resides in Seoul. He won a PEN Translates grant for his translation of The Underground Village by Kang Kyeong-ae and a PEN/Heim grant for Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny, the latter of which was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. His translation of Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City was longlisted for the same prize in the same year. His translation of Violets was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. His other translations include Kyung-Sook Shin’s The Court Dancer and I Went to See My Father, Djuna’s Counterweight, and Baek Sehee’s I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki.

more about the translator