Bora Chung, Anton Hur reunite for outer space war epic 'Red Sword'
From left, "Red Sword" author Bora Chung and translator Anton Hur take part in a book launch talk moderated by Honford Star co-founder Taylor Bradley at Platform P in Seoul's Mapo District, Saturday. Courtesy of Kim Byeong-mun
Author Bora Chung and translator Anton Hur began their shared literary voyage with the English edition of “Cursed Bunny,” a genre-blurring short story collection that leapt onto the global stage as a finalist for the 2022 International Booker Prize and the 2023 National Book Award.
Their creative collaboration continued in “Your Utopia,” another collection that broke new ground this year as the first Korean work ever shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award.
This month, the duo has turned a new page in their ongoing literary partnership with the English translation of “Red Sword,” set to hit shelves on May 13.
The English edition of "Red Sword" by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur / Courtesy of Kim Byeong-mun
Where “Cursed Bunny” and “Your Utopia” pulse with taut, surgically restrained prose, “Red Sword” erupts with spectacle — a dreamy, action-fueled war story set in the far reaches of space.
Its protagonists, enslaved prisoners of a vast empire, are hurled into combat as cannon fodder against mysterious, white-skinned aliens.
The novel draws inspiration from the 17th-century Sino-Russian border conflicts, when China’s Qing dynasty summoned military reinforcements from Joseon to fend off the Russian forces.
“General Shin Yu [who led a small Korean unit of 200 sharpshooters in 1658] didn’t know where he was going, whom he was supposed to fight or why he was fighting. He just went because his king told him to,” Chung said during a book launch talk at Platform P in western Seoul, Saturday.
For those Joseon soldiers, who had never even heard of Russia, encountering the foreign troops — their unfamiliar race, language, attire, weaponry and combat tactics — must have felt like facing otherworldly aliens.
That disorienting encounter, the writer said, planted the seed for her story: expendable fighters thrown into a savage war against an unknown foe, without ever being told why.
Although originally released in Korean in 2019, the novel’s narrative resonates chillingly with recent reports of North Korean soldiers being deployed to fight for Russia in its war against Ukraine.
"Red Sword" author Bora Chung, left, and translator Anton Hur speak during a book talk at Platform P, Saturday. Courtesy of Kim Byeong-mun
For Hur, translating “Red Sword” came more easily thanks to his long-running collaboration with Chung. “She’s an author that I’ve done before … so I already had the voice down,” he said. “I didn’t have to figure out what Bora should sound like in English.”
Their creative chemistry, he added, has always felt natural. “She has a very international literary outlook, and she does things that a lot of more traditionalist Korean authors don’t do.”
The biggest challenge, he admitted, was navigating the book’s densely choreographed action scenes.
“I had to be really, really clear on whose face [was being punched], which fist was doing the punching. And then it all had to make sense at the end of it. There was a lot of acting it out spatially,” he said.
The author-translator duo shows no signs of slowing down. Several more projects are already in the pipeline, including the English edition of Chung’s “Midnight Timetable,” slated for publication in September.
And in a surprising role reversal, readers can also look forward to Chung taking the translator’s seat to render Hur’s own speculative novel, “Toward Eternity,” into Korean in the coming months.