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April 22nd-28th 2023 Ukraine’s game planThe EconomistAt a loss for words
H
an Kang
was already a literary star in
South Korea when “The Vegetarian”
was published in 2007, but her reputation
was burnished when Deborah Smith’s Eng
lish translation won the International
Booker prize in 2016. The surreal and sinis
ter novel chronicled the cruelty inflicted
on a woman after she stops eating meat; an
overseas audience proved hungry for the
story of female oppression and resistance,
as well as a narrative style that broke free of
realist literary norms.
In the next of Ms Han’s novels to be
translated, “Human Acts”, cruelty is inflict
ed by the state, not family and friends. It
was inspired by a massacre of student prot
esters in 1980 in the author’s home city of
Gwangju. Then came “The White Book”, an
autobiographical account of a Korean nov
elist in Warsaw. As she reflects on the city’s
wartime destruction and rebirth, she also
muses on the death of her infant sister.
Loss is a theme of “Greek Lessons”, too,
Ms Han’s latest novel to arrive in English.
Elliptical and fragmentary, it toggles be
tween two unnamed characters living in
Seoul. One half of the novel is narrated by a
teacher of ancient Greek. The other half
follows one of his students, a divorced
young poet who, rendered mute by the
death of her mother, hopes to regain her
voice by taking his class.
Ms Han’s style creates mystery, yet
snippets of back story gradually make
things clearer. The woman’s loss of speech
is a recurrence of a problem that first tran
spired when she was a teenager. (The rem
edy then was to learn French.) Adding to
her grief is the loss of her nineyearold
son in a custody battle. Her teacher, unsure
how to help her communicate, has pro
blems of his own: he is losing his sight.
At the heart of the novel lies the difficul
ty of giving voice to psychological and
emotional dislocation; Ms Han uses the
characters’ problems as a metaphor for the
inadequacy of language in general. But in
the closing pages, a story of the mind be
comes a story of the body, when an acci
dent leaves the teacher in urgent need of
help. A breakthrough in communication
suddenly becomes vital.
“The shards of memories shift and form
patterns. Without particular context, with
out overall perspective or meaning. They
scatter; suddenly, decisively, they come to
gether,” writes Ms Han, during a passage in
which the woman recalls a conversation
with her son. It is an apt description of how
this slender, enigmatic novel works.
n
Greek Lessons.
By Han Kang. Translated
by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won.
Hogarth; 192 pages; $26. Hamish
Hamilton; £16.99
In restless dreams, I walked alone
012
77
The Economist
April 22nd 2023
Culture
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