Han Kang

Originally published in Korean in 2011 it has finally been released in early 2023 in English with a translation from Deborah Smith.

In Greek Lessons, the nameless narrator finds the echo of words in her mind so overwhelming, that she loses her capacity to speak. She signs up for a for ancient Greek language course to see if she can communicate in a language other than her native Korean.
Her instructor is captivated by the silent woman since he himself is slowly going blind.

Soon the two discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it’s the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence when his sight finally fails him completely .

Greek Lessons is the narrative of an improbable friendship between these two people, as well as a beautiful discourse on human closeness and connection. Greek Lessons is a remarkably deep book for such a short tale.


https://quizlit.org/book-of-the-month-june-2023… (more)

This book will stay with me a very long time. Written by Korean author Han Kang, and beautifully translated by Deborah Smith, the focus of this book is the 1980 student uprising in Gwangju. This was a brutal episode in South Korea's recent history, in which students were viciously suppressed in the course of a peaceful demonstration. This book, which encounters the victims and the bereaved in a series of interconnecting episodes could have been sensational and bloody in tone. It's not. Unrelenting in its exposure of the feelings and emotions of those living through and after the events, it's reflective, poetic and deeply moving. The memory of the boy Dong-Ho wanders through the book, as his mother, his family and those who had any connection with him get no answers to their question'why?'. It sounds a difficult read, and in some ways it is. But its poetic use of language, its reflective tone, draws the reader in. We too become involved it the book's search for meaning in the brutal events of 1980.… (more)