Review of Your Utopia by Bora Chung

*Your Utopia* by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (2024). Published by Algonquin Books.

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Ever since I did my master’s degree focused on Korean women’s literature, I’ve been keeping an eye out for more Asian literature in general at my local library. I’ve actually been pretty impressed by the selection they’re starting to get in nowadays, as I’m noticing a lot more Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writers in translation on our shelves.

Maybe it’s because I was requesting so many books they had to relent. I’ll keep telling myself that, but in the mean time, I’ve been having a blast picking up all the books I don’t have time to read but will cram in anyways. Funemployment has truly helped me out in that department.

Anyways, Bora Chung has been on of those writers that I always keep an eye out for. I loved Cursed Bunny, and when I was studying abroad in Busan in the summer of 2024, I even picked up a Korean copy of the short story collection to slowly work through.

So when I spotted Your Utopia in the new fiction section of my library, I snatched it up immediately. I was more than ready to read her when I got home, and I flew through this collection over the course of two days.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

A collection of short stories about society through the prism of fantasy and science fiction.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to pick up a copy of Cursed Bunny, then do so after this book. Cursed Bunny is told through the prism of horror, but it touches on many of the same themes that this collection also mentions throughout each of its stories. However, this is a completely different vibe.

In the first short story, it sets the tone for the rest to come. It’s about an employee at a company who’s tasked with creating a gala for donors, but while she’s there, she spots something she definitely should have looked away from. That said, when people realize that, she’s going to get blamed for it. There’s also a bend where rich people want to live forever, adding further critique of social class.

One of the most striking short stories in the collection to me is about a group of researchers sent up to space. There’s a mysterious disease that’s appeared recently that has people attacking others for their flesh, and if you’re bitten, then you’re going to want to eat other people too.

So on the space ship, they seemingly are all clear of the virus, but then the protagonist notices it’s leaking in through a myriad of ways. When it starts with one person on a contained ship, it’s going to spread quickly, and that’s what happen. Some questions of morals appear throughout this story, and it’s a wild ride—literally.

There’s also another story that stood out to me was the one about the AI elevator inside of an apartment complex. Basically the elevator is programmed to help out the residents, but because this is an AI story, it develops a consciousness and happens to fall in love with someone living in the apartment building.

These are just some of the stories contained within these pages, with some honorable mentions going to the story where the world has ended and all that’s left are some robots with solar panels. All of these stories are what I love about science fiction: they use the unreal to critique the realities with live in.

The use of robots is particularly striking to me, as it represents something so not human, but when it’s all that’s left, it becomes a reminder of what we once were capable of. At the same time, they’re often humanized, giving us the opportunity to show that there’s humanity in everything—or, as I interpret, simply life.

Overall Thoughts

Of the two collections available so far in English, I would say that I prefer Cursed Bunny. I think this book isn’t one that’s for everyone at the end of the day, as some of the stories I found more difficult to get through. I did get through them though, or this review wouldn’t exist.

All in all I did enjoy reading the collection. It’s just a different vibe completely from her previous collection, although she is using the unreal as a critique. I like that a lot about Chung’s work, and I think it strikes some chords within me as well as an American reader.

Her prose is also really good—she’s such a talented writer. I can’t wait to see more of her work in the future.

Pick this one up if you haven’t already and want to! Go to your library or local independent bookstore.

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