In the collection of stories you’ve described, the author, Bora Chung, weaves a tapestry of diverse and imaginative tales that challenge traditional fairy tale conventions and explore themes of agency, empowerment, and resilience. These stories are characterized by whimsy, sarcasm, and a playful approach to subverting gender norms and established character archetypes. Here is a summary of each story:
- The Princess in the Tower, The Knight in the Moonlight, and With the One I Love: In this trilogy, the traditional damsel-in-distress trope is turned on its head. The princess, tired of being pursued by her male knight and former lover on behalf of a jealous queen, calls upon a dragon to save her from assassination attempts. The princess refuses to be “rescued” and learns to wield a sword, challenging gender roles. The stories blend Western and Eastern folklore, featuring dragons, zombies, witches, and more. The characters, both male and female, exhibit a range of traits, from deceitful to honest and brave, and they shape their own destinies.
- The Light of the Desert: This story follows Muslim merchants traveling along the Silk Road. They encounter a starving girl who sells herself to them for a sack of grain. The merchants protect her from harm and present her as a gift to their dying sultan. After the sultan’s death, the girl is set free, and she returns to her hometown with the help of an Eastern dragon, promising to end drought and famine.
- The King of Women: A reimagining of the biblical David and Jonathan story with a gender swap. After a female David defeats Goliath, she is promised the king’s son in marriage. However, the king’s daughter schemes against her and seeks to overthrow the king. The story ends with David fleeing after her husband is slain.
- The Chronicle of Lost Time: This story is about a Korean narrator’s grandmother’s passing and the loss of her narrative. It is intertwined with the chronicle of a mystical warrior-queen who goes into exile and returns to conquer her kingdom. The narrator translates this chronicle and visits the warrior-queen’s remains in a local museum while grieving her grandmother.
- Kiss in the Dark: Inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula and a Korean newspaper serial from the 1920s, this story is about a vampire who kills her human husband. The vampire is married to a violent man, and she knows that feeding on his blood will lead to his death. The couple’s driver falls in love with the vampire and asks her to turn him into a vampire. She complies, but she is aware that he will ultimately become her enemy.
These stories are characterized by their rich visual imagery, taking place in diverse settings such as castles, Russian villages, the Silk Road, deserts, cities, forests, and historical eras. The characters come from various cultural backgrounds, including Russian, Arab, Korean, Semitic, and Eastern European/Slavic. The narratives are marked by violence and gore, featuring epic battles, zombies, sword duels, assassination attempts, domestic violence, and attempted rape, making them suitable for adaptation into TV or film. Despite the fantastical elements, the stories emphasize the agency and determination of their characters, especially the women, who shape their own destinies in a world where they are not passive victims of fate.