Human Acts

A riveting, poetic and unrelentingly powerful work from the author of the highly acclaimed novel The Vegetarian

A riveting, poetic and powerful work from the author of the International Booker Prize-winning novel The Vegetarian.'Exquisite, painful and deeply courageous' Philippe Sands, Best Books of the Year, Guardian Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. Amid a violent student uprising a young boy named Dong-ho is killed. As his friend searches for Dong-ho's corpse, we also meet an editor struggling against censorship, a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories, and Dong-ho's grief-stricken mother. Through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope comes a tale of a brutalised people in search of a voice. A modern classic, Human Acts has been both a controversial bestseller and an award-winning book in Korea, and it confirmed Han Kang as a writer of international importance. '[Han Kang's] way of telling about the events of a 10-day insurgency in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980 and its psychological, spiritual and political aftermath opened my eyes' Susie Orbach, Best Books of the Year, Guardian

Auteur
Han Kang was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Gwangju, South Korea, she moved to Seoul at the age of ten. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University. Her writing has won the Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today's Young Artist Award, and the Korean Literature Novel Award. The Vegetarian, her first novel to be translated into English, *was published by Portobello Books in 2015 and won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. She is also the author of *Human Acts (Portobello, 2016) and The White Book (Portobello, 2017). She is based in Seoul. Deborah Smith grew up in Doncaster. She has translated Korean books by Han Kang, Bae Suah, and Kim Haeja. In 2015 she founded Tilted Axis Press to publish anti-colonial translations from across Asia. She has lived in north India since 2020 and is slowly learning her daughter's mother tongue. She writes on translation, whiteness, class, and sick women.Deborah Smith grew up in Doncaster. She has translated Korean books by Han Kang, Bae Suah, and Kim Haeja. In 2015 she founded Tilted Axis Press to publish anti-colonial translations from across Asia. She has lived in north India since 2020 and is slowly learning her daughter's mother tongue. She writes on translation, whiteness, class, and sick women.

Texte du rabat
A riveting, poetic and unrelentingly powerful work from the author of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize-winning novel "The Vegetarian". A beautiful novel about trauma, oppression, censorship and the articulation of wordless, devastating violence.