The Midnight Timetable
by Bora Chung
Translated by Anton Hur
Bora Chung’s horror story collection Cursed Bunny, originally published in South Korea in 2017, reached English-speaking readers in a translation by Anton Hur that earned a nomination for the 2022 International Booker Prize. Since Cursed Bunny hopped into the wild, the same writer–translator duo has returned with further works. Among these is The Midnight Timetable, a collection of interconnected horror stories linked by a frame narrative.
The stories are told by the night staff
of a sinister “Institute” that investigates haunted or cursed objects. As Chung
explains in the book’s afterword, each story is meant to feel “like visiting a
different lab room in the Institute”. Chung herself refers to these tales as
“ghost stories”, and one piece in particular is a clear example of a
vengeful-spirit narrative, inspired by Korean traditions of wronged women who
return to the living bearing a grudge.
However, the collection also reveals the
influence of contemporary urban legends (The Tunnel), ancient myth (The
Blue Bird), and black-humoured surrealism (Silence of the Sheep).
Running beneath these stories is a strong political impulse toward social
critique. While the individual tales are well crafted, I found the collection
as a whole somewhat unfocused and, ultimately, rather slight.
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