Human Acts by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)

Granta

9781846275975

224pp

Winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, Han Kang’s writing is a love letter to South Korea. Her writing is majestic, poetic, and haunting. Human Acts is no different. Focused on a student uprising in Gwangju in 1980, this book tells the story of its repercussions amongst a select handful of characters. The entire story hinges on one boy, Dong-ho, and his place in the uprising.

At first we meet Dong-ho, and learn that his friend has gone missing, and he is searching for the body. Then we come across a spirit, still tied to its body, and listen to its rage. From there, we flutter through an array of people; Dong-ho’s mother, an editor, a factory worker, a prisoner. Each one takes their path through the uprising and beyond.

The Gwangju Uprising of 18 May 1980 began when Chonnam National University students were violently suppressed (beaten, tortured, and killed) for demonstrating against martial law. While official figures place victims at 165, it is more widely estimated that anywhere between 600 to 2,300 people were killed.

It is at the centre of this massacre that Han Kang places her story. A beautiful heartbreak, you will come away breathless and destroyed by these pages. Han Kang does the most expert job at weaving the more fantastical elements with the hardened narrative, making you cry again and again. I have to admit, I was a little sceptical at reading this (I was not the hugest fan of The Vegetarian), but it honestly blew me away. I had to sit and reflect for a good day or so after finishing it before I could move on to my next read.

It’s hard to describe a book so moving that you didn’t want to put it down, but at the same time so brutal you had to step away from time to time. Riveting, powerful, painful, exquisite… no words can quite capture the beauty of this book. I will be pressing it into as many hands as I can manage.