Human Acts

About

In May 1980, South Korean paratroopers opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the city of Gwangju, killing hundreds. Han Kang builds this novel from the aftermath — not as a single narrative but as seven voices: a boy tending bodies in a makeshift morgue, the soul of his dead friend leaving its body, a woman who survived torture and cannot stop feeling the hands, a prisoner who will eventually take his own life. Each chapter shifts perspective and tense, moving from 1980 to the present day, layering grief upon grief until the massacre is not a historical event but a wound that never closes. Han Kang was born in Gwangju. She learned what happened when she was twelve, through a book of photographs of the dead. This novel is her attempt to look at those photographs and not turn away.