Human Acts: A Novel - Softcover
Synopsis
From the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian, a “rare and astonishing” (The Observer) portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice.
In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.
The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend who meets his own fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.
An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of an historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.
Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award
Amazon, 100 Best Books of 2017
The Atlantic, “The Best Books We Read in 2017”
San Francisco Chronicle, “Best of 2017: 100 Recommended Books”
NPR Book Concierge, 2017’s Great Reads
Library Journal, “Best Books of 2017”
Huffington Post, “Best Fiction Books of 2017”
Medium, Kong Tsung-gan’s “Best Human Rights Books of 2017”
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Review
An Amazon Best Book of January 2017: Han Kang, author of the Man Booker Prize-winning The Vegetarian, is back with a new novel that is as poetic as it is disturbing, profound as it is intimate, brave as it is brilliant. This is a story seeped in South Korean history but rooted in the stronghold of humanity. In Human Acts, Kang recounts a violent uprising in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980 and begins unapologetically with the bodies – the bodies piled unclaimed and rotting of the students that were murdered. Dong-ho, a young teenager looks for his friend amidst the rubble, clinging to the proximity of his friend’s last breath. Refusing to go home, Dong-ho is murdered. From there, Kang’s epic novel blooms outward, telling the stories of friends, family, prisoners, editors that are haunted, ruined and ravaged by the atrocities of that day. Kang is uncompromisingly raw in her portrayal of the violence, censorship and political corruption that pervades the lives of these South Koreans. She unfurls how trauma extends across generations, how forgetting is impossible and how human touch can still incite hope: “it felt as they were rethreading the sinews of that world heart, patching up the fissures from which blood had flowed, making it beat again.” Human Acts is a triumph of sustained force and poetry. --Al Woodworth, The Amazon Book Review
About the Author
Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. In 1993 she made her literary debut as a poet, and was first published as a novelist in 1994. A participant in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Han has won the Man Booker International Prize, the Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today’s Young Artist Award, and the Manhae Prize for Literature. She currently works as a professor in the department of creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
www.writerhankang.com
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- PublisherHogarth
- Publication date2017
- ISBN 10 110190674X
- ISBN 13 9781101906743
- BindingPaperback
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pages240
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