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Human Acts
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.
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.
218 pages, Hardcover
First published May 19, 2014
About the author
Han Kang
43 books4,845 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
소설가 한강
Han Kang is the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won. She was born in Kwangju and at the age of 10, moved to Suyuri (which she speaks of affectionately in her work "Greek Lessons") in Seoul.
She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University. She began her writing career when one of her poems was featured in the winter issue of the quarterly Literature and Society. She made her official literary debut in the following year when her short story "The Scarlet Anchor" was the winning entry in the daily Seoul Shinmun spring literary contest.
Since then, she has gone on to win the Yi Sang Literary Prize (2005), Today's Young Artist Award, and the Korean Literature Novel Award. As of summer 2013, Han teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts while writing stories and novels.
소설가 한강
Han Kang is the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won. She was born in Kwangju and at the age of 10, moved to Suyuri (which she speaks of affectionately in her work "Greek Lessons") in Seoul.
She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University. She began her writing career when one of her poems was featured in the winter issue of the quarterly Literature and Society. She made her official literary debut in the following year when her short story "The Scarlet Anchor" was the winning entry in the daily Seoul Shinmun spring literary contest.
Since then, she has gone on to win the Yi Sang Literary Prize (2005), Today's Young Artist Award, and the Korean Literature Novel Award. As of summer 2013, Han teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts while writing stories and novels.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,127 reviews
October 13, 2020
“I still remember the moment when my gaze fell upon the mutilated face of a young woman, her features slashed through with a bayonet. Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't realised was there.”
This book is brutal and uncompromising; it begins with a flourish of blood and barbarity that is fast and unexpected. However, we only get the aftermath of such butchery. We see the devastation the event has caused, but only ever catch glimpses of it itself. And herein lays the brilliance of such writing.
When a crowd of student protestors took hold of a Korean city in the 1980s they were gunned down, beaten and just about obliterated by the government forces that occupied the area. The event was later refeed to as The Gwangju-Massacre, and it truly is one of the most disturbing acts of violence in the twentieth century. Many were left dead in the streets, more wounded, and the rest were rounded up and thrown into prison. Google it or, better yet, look at some dramatizations of it on youtube if you want to get more of the facts.
Han Kang side-skips the event itself and begins her novel with a pile of corpses and an ocean of blood; she begins her story with the bodies of all the young people that sung the national anthem whist they were mowed down by their own country’s soldiers. When they congregated into the streets with their flags and their cries for democracy, they were met with the result of dictatorship. What follows is the devastation such an event would cause. The people are left in ruins, and trying to pick up any sense of normal life afterwards became near impossible. Nothing could ever be the same for these characters and, no doubt, the people it happened to in real life. They would all remember this dark day.
“Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?”
The novel is also about legacy. It begins immediately in the morgue, and then moves to the consciousness of a boy looking for a sense of belonging after he has been killed. We then move five years into the future, seeing the malicious punishments inflicted on those that were thrown imprison. Eventually we see how after even twenty years, the effects of the event still haunt the steps of those that were involved.
This is a book about how a single event can, ultimately, change the face of a nation. How do people carry one calling themselves members of a country in the wake of such maliciousness? There is a sense of disheartenment and betrayal due to the sheer shock-horror felt in the wake of one��s own leader ordering such an action. Who are they afterwards? The nation is grieving and the people feel lost in this new place the event has caused. Disillusionment, estrangement and a lack of belonging are things that come to mind.
I have but one criticism of this book. The writing was concise and superb; it was emotive, bitter and almost snappy at points. Structurally speaking, the book was a great success. But there’s one voice missing in the symphony of souls that lived with the heart ache. What of the men who were just “following orders?” What of the men who pulled the trigger because this is what they were told to do? How did they feel afterwards? Did they actually care? I would love to have seen it represented here.
So if you want to read a book that is raw, real and powerful, then this is where to look. Despite the oversight I mentioned, this is still, without a single doubt, a five star read. Han Kang please carry on writting, and please get all your book translated to English!
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree.
__________________________________
This book is brutal and uncompromising; it begins with a flourish of blood and barbarity that is fast and unexpected. However, we only get the aftermath of such butchery. We see the devastation the event has caused, but only ever catch glimpses of it itself. And herein lays the brilliance of such writing.
When a crowd of student protestors took hold of a Korean city in the 1980s they were gunned down, beaten and just about obliterated by the government forces that occupied the area. The event was later refeed to as The Gwangju-Massacre, and it truly is one of the most disturbing acts of violence in the twentieth century. Many were left dead in the streets, more wounded, and the rest were rounded up and thrown into prison. Google it or, better yet, look at some dramatizations of it on youtube if you want to get more of the facts.
Han Kang side-skips the event itself and begins her novel with a pile of corpses and an ocean of blood; she begins her story with the bodies of all the young people that sung the national anthem whist they were mowed down by their own country’s soldiers. When they congregated into the streets with their flags and their cries for democracy, they were met with the result of dictatorship. What follows is the devastation such an event would cause. The people are left in ruins, and trying to pick up any sense of normal life afterwards became near impossible. Nothing could ever be the same for these characters and, no doubt, the people it happened to in real life. They would all remember this dark day.
“Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?”
The novel is also about legacy. It begins immediately in the morgue, and then moves to the consciousness of a boy looking for a sense of belonging after he has been killed. We then move five years into the future, seeing the malicious punishments inflicted on those that were thrown imprison. Eventually we see how after even twenty years, the effects of the event still haunt the steps of those that were involved.
This is a book about how a single event can, ultimately, change the face of a nation. How do people carry one calling themselves members of a country in the wake of such maliciousness? There is a sense of disheartenment and betrayal due to the sheer shock-horror felt in the wake of one��s own leader ordering such an action. Who are they afterwards? The nation is grieving and the people feel lost in this new place the event has caused. Disillusionment, estrangement and a lack of belonging are things that come to mind.
I have but one criticism of this book. The writing was concise and superb; it was emotive, bitter and almost snappy at points. Structurally speaking, the book was a great success. But there’s one voice missing in the symphony of souls that lived with the heart ache. What of the men who were just “following orders?” What of the men who pulled the trigger because this is what they were told to do? How did they feel afterwards? Did they actually care? I would love to have seen it represented here.
So if you want to read a book that is raw, real and powerful, then this is where to look. Despite the oversight I mentioned, this is still, without a single doubt, a five star read. Han Kang please carry on writting, and please get all your book translated to English!
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree.
__________________________________
February 2, 2024
I don't have much to say about this book, beyond you should read it, and it's a wrenching masterwork, and it has so much to say on the subject of pain and suffering and war and power and empire and the evil that humans are capable of.
And that you should read it.
Bottom line: Stop reading my dumb words when Han Kang's are much better.
------------
pre-review
a masterpiece.
review to come / approx 4.5
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tbr review
han kang hive rise up
And that you should read it.
Bottom line: Stop reading my dumb words when Han Kang's are much better.
------------
pre-review
a masterpiece.
review to come / approx 4.5
------------
tbr review
han kang hive rise up
June 1, 2017
I had mixed feelings after finishing Kang's The Vegetarian, but I cannot deny that the book sucked me right into it's dark, weird allegory. Which is why I'm surprised that this book left me feeling cold and detached. It feels so distant and impersonal, lacking an atmosphere worthy of the subject matter.
Human Acts tells an important story that I'm sure many people know nothing about - that of the South Korean Gwangju Uprising in 1980. In a daring plot choice that should have been far more effective than it was, Kang begins by talking about bodies. Specifically, the corpses lined up in boxes, waiting for family and friends to come identify them. One chapter is even told from the perspective of a dead body.
Are you horrified, and yet intrigued? So was I. Unfortunately, the second person narration is jarring and strange. Where The Vegetarian's weirdness kept me interested enough to read on, here the weird aspects left me feeling detached and bored.
All of the chapters, though connected, feel like individual stories. I jumped around from perspective to perspective, never coming to feel an attachment to any character or their story. I realize I am in the minority, perhaps not unlike how I was with The Underground Railroad, but I cannot connect with these books about historical horrors that lay out in the events in such a cold way, lacking any human emotion.
I appreciate that it is probably a conscious choice on the author's part; a decision meant to serve a purpose and - probably - demonstrate the cold inhumanity of such parts of history, but any book that leaves me feeling emotionally cold, whether intentionally or otherwise, is not one that will stay with me.
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Human Acts tells an important story that I'm sure many people know nothing about - that of the South Korean Gwangju Uprising in 1980. In a daring plot choice that should have been far more effective than it was, Kang begins by talking about bodies. Specifically, the corpses lined up in boxes, waiting for family and friends to come identify them. One chapter is even told from the perspective of a dead body.
Are you horrified, and yet intrigued? So was I. Unfortunately, the second person narration is jarring and strange. Where The Vegetarian's weirdness kept me interested enough to read on, here the weird aspects left me feeling detached and bored.
All of the chapters, though connected, feel like individual stories. I jumped around from perspective to perspective, never coming to feel an attachment to any character or their story. I realize I am in the minority, perhaps not unlike how I was with The Underground Railroad, but I cannot connect with these books about historical horrors that lay out in the events in such a cold way, lacking any human emotion.
I appreciate that it is probably a conscious choice on the author's part; a decision meant to serve a purpose and - probably - demonstrate the cold inhumanity of such parts of history, but any book that leaves me feeling emotionally cold, whether intentionally or otherwise, is not one that will stay with me.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube
December 31, 2021
wow. this is a very raw reflection on the atrocious acts humans are capable of committing, as well as the resilience of those who survived them.
like the majority of reviewers, ive never heard of the gwangju student uprising/massacre, but what a crucial and heartbreaking moment in korean history. and i think the structure of this novel is quite clever in how it presents the overall effects of such an event. i like how the focus is on the death of one particular boy, rather than the uprising as a whole, and how his death has impacted so many lives throughout the years. the different chapters come together in a really cohesive way because of this.
i will say that when it comes to the storytelling, the second person narrative took some getting used to. im not a fan of second person POV in general and, for this story specifically, it actually made me feel more detached from the characters rather than the intended closeness. the story content reminded me a lot of ‘do not say we have nothing’ (chinese student uprising/massacre in tiananmen square), but i felt like that had a much more relatable narrative.
but this is still a really good novel for learning about and experiencing new perspectives about a lesser-known event in history.
↠ 3.5 stars
like the majority of reviewers, ive never heard of the gwangju student uprising/massacre, but what a crucial and heartbreaking moment in korean history. and i think the structure of this novel is quite clever in how it presents the overall effects of such an event. i like how the focus is on the death of one particular boy, rather than the uprising as a whole, and how his death has impacted so many lives throughout the years. the different chapters come together in a really cohesive way because of this.
i will say that when it comes to the storytelling, the second person narrative took some getting used to. im not a fan of second person POV in general and, for this story specifically, it actually made me feel more detached from the characters rather than the intended closeness. the story content reminded me a lot of ‘do not say we have nothing’ (chinese student uprising/massacre in tiananmen square), but i felt like that had a much more relatable narrative.
but this is still a really good novel for learning about and experiencing new perspectives about a lesser-known event in history.
↠ 3.5 stars
February 10, 2017
That's it, my next book needs to be comic... erotic...or fantasy.....or maybe a cowboy dancer story.....but -- yikes -- don't read this book before bedtime!
It's Brilliant.......but, brutal bacteria brain bankruptcy!!!!
If the book cover - alone isn't a clue that this story isn't going to eat through your skin - burn away your flesh - down to your bare bones....then by all means...dive in and find out for yourself!
Inspired writing comes from a real event. Gwangju Uprising, South Korea... 1980
"Han Kang"....is a "QUEEN-BLEAK-GUT-WRENCHING-POWERFUL-STORYTELLER". She rattled my bones in "The Vegetarian", and hollowed them in
"Human Acts".
Local University students were demonstrating against the Chun Doo hwan government--then were attacked, fired upon, beaten, killed. It was a brutal massacre...by the army and police. They stood for justice - and died for it.
Over 600 people were killed. In Han Kang's book...
she focuses on a 15-year-old innocent boy, named Dong Ho, who was killed.
In the Epilogue.....Han Kang writes about a time - in 2009 - when she was glued to the television watching the towers burning in the middle of the night and surprised herself with words that came out of her mouth...
"But that's Gwangju. In other words, "Gwangju" has become another name for what ever is forcibly isolated, beaten down, and brutalized, for all that has been
mutilated beyond repair. The radioactive spread is ongoing. Gwangju has been reborn only to be butchered again in the endless cycle. It was razed to the ground, and raised up and anew in a bloodied rebirth".
I can imagine the guilty feelings Han Kang had of her 'thoughts'.
Many of the descriptions are gruesome and unbearable...but this story had been kept very quiet from the world ...perhaps by opening it up -there is a possibility for healing to begin.
It's Brilliant.......but, brutal bacteria brain bankruptcy!!!!
If the book cover - alone isn't a clue that this story isn't going to eat through your skin - burn away your flesh - down to your bare bones....then by all means...dive in and find out for yourself!
Inspired writing comes from a real event. Gwangju Uprising, South Korea... 1980
"Han Kang"....is a "QUEEN-BLEAK-GUT-WRENCHING-POWERFUL-STORYTELLER". She rattled my bones in "The Vegetarian", and hollowed them in
"Human Acts".
Local University students were demonstrating against the Chun Doo hwan government--then were attacked, fired upon, beaten, killed. It was a brutal massacre...by the army and police. They stood for justice - and died for it.
Over 600 people were killed. In Han Kang's book...
she focuses on a 15-year-old innocent boy, named Dong Ho, who was killed.
In the Epilogue.....Han Kang writes about a time - in 2009 - when she was glued to the television watching the towers burning in the middle of the night and surprised herself with words that came out of her mouth...
"But that's Gwangju. In other words, "Gwangju" has become another name for what ever is forcibly isolated, beaten down, and brutalized, for all that has been
mutilated beyond repair. The radioactive spread is ongoing. Gwangju has been reborn only to be butchered again in the endless cycle. It was razed to the ground, and raised up and anew in a bloodied rebirth".
I can imagine the guilty feelings Han Kang had of her 'thoughts'.
Many of the descriptions are gruesome and unbearable...but this story had been kept very quiet from the world ...perhaps by opening it up -there is a possibility for healing to begin.
April 28, 2024
"نفضل الموت واقفين علي أقدامنا عِوضَ الحياة راكعين.."
أفعال بشرية هو كتاب عن إنتفاضة غوانغجو التي وقعت عام ١٩٨٠ جنوب غرب كوريا وهي كانت عبارة عن مظاهرات طلابية رفضاً لقانون الطوارئ وتطورت لصراع مسلح بين المدنيين والجيش والشرطة وأدت إلي مصرع أكثر من ألفين شخص ..
الرواية عبارة عن شهادات مفصلة لأحداث الإنتفاضة من خلال كذا شخص منهم الحي ومنهم الميت! أو كما هو مكتوب في تعريف الكتاب هي قصة يرويها أحياء عن أموات وأموات عن
أحياء...
المفروض إنه كتاب مؤلم وكئيب ...بس هي الكتب الكئيبة أنواع..
في كتب كئيبة وممتعة في قراءتها علي الرغم من صعوبة محتواها...
وفي كتب كئيبة بس دمها تقيل وبتكون مكتوبة بأسلوب جاف ومش مشوق...
والرواية هنا من النوع الثاني...إسلوب السرد كان غير ممتع بالمرة..
علي الرغم من وحشية الأحداث إلا إنني لم أتعاطف مع شخصيات الرواية..
الكاتبة مقدرتش توصلي كم الوجع والألم الذي عاني منه كل هـؤلاء الضحايا...
الصراحة أنا جالي إحباط أثناء القراءة خصوصا إن هان كانغ الكاتبة، هي من كتبت النباتية وهي من أجمل الروايات اللي ممكن أي حد يقراها..
أحلي حاجة في الكتاب كانت مقدمة المترجم الذي أستطاع أن يعطي نبذة عن الأحداث بطريقة ممتعة ومفيدة -خصوصاً للي ميعرفش حاجة عن هذه الإنتفاضة(زيي كدة) -واللي ساعدتني جداً في فهم الكتاب وتفاصيله...
تقييمي نجمتين فقط لهذه الرواية المملة ولكن كالعادة برفع التقييم لما باستفاد من الرواية بمعلومات جديدة..
وأخيراً اللي حصل في كوريا مع الطلاب..مش جديد علينا..مازالت إراقة الدماء لمجرد التعبير عن الرأي بتحصل ..و مازالت أفعال العنف ضد المدنيين العُزل من قبل السلطة بدون ذرة ندم أو حتي تردد برضو بتحصل...
لك�� أهم حاجة وأصعب حاجة إن مازلت محاكمة الجناة أمام العدالة لما أقترفوه في حق الشعوب ....مش بتحصل!
"لا طريق للعودة إلي العالم ما قبل التعذيب.لا طريق للعودة إلي العالم ما قبل المذبحة.."
أفعال بشرية هو كتاب عن إنتفاضة غوانغجو التي وقعت عام ١٩٨٠ جنوب غرب كوريا وهي كانت عبارة عن مظاهرات طلابية رفضاً لقانون الطوارئ وتطورت لصراع مسلح بين المدنيين والجيش والشرطة وأدت إلي مصرع أكثر من ألفين شخص ..
الرواية عبارة عن شهادات مفصلة لأحداث الإنتفاضة من خلال كذا شخص منهم الحي ومنهم الميت! أو كما هو مكتوب في تعريف الكتاب هي قصة يرويها أحياء عن أموات وأموات عن
أحياء...
المفروض إنه كتاب مؤلم وكئيب ...بس هي الكتب الكئيبة أنواع..
في كتب كئيبة وممتعة في قراءتها علي الرغم من صعوبة محتواها...
وفي كتب كئيبة بس دمها تقيل وبتكون مكتوبة بأسلوب جاف ومش مشوق...
والرواية هنا من النوع الثاني...إسلوب السرد كان غير ممتع بالمرة..
علي الرغم من وحشية الأحداث إلا إنني لم أتعاطف مع شخصيات الرواية..
الكاتبة مقدرتش توصلي كم الوجع والألم الذي عاني منه كل هـؤلاء الضحايا...
الصراحة أنا جالي إحباط أثناء القراءة خصوصا إن هان كانغ الكاتبة، هي من كتبت النباتية وهي من أجمل الروايات اللي ممكن أي حد يقراها..
أحلي حاجة في الكتاب كانت مقدمة المترجم الذي أستطاع أن يعطي نبذة عن الأحداث بطريقة ممتعة ومفيدة -خصوصاً للي ميعرفش حاجة عن هذه الإنتفاضة(زيي كدة) -واللي ساعدتني جداً في فهم الكتاب وتفاصيله...
تقييمي نجمتين فقط لهذه الرواية المملة ولكن كالعادة برفع التقييم لما باستفاد من الرواية بمعلومات جديدة..
وأخيراً اللي حصل في كوريا مع الطلاب..مش جديد علينا..مازالت إراقة الدماء لمجرد التعبير عن الرأي بتحصل ..و مازالت أفعال العنف ضد المدنيين العُزل من قبل السلطة بدون ذرة ندم أو حتي تردد برضو بتحصل...
لك�� أهم حاجة وأصعب حاجة إن مازلت محاكمة الجناة أمام العدالة لما أقترفوه في حق الشعوب ....مش بتحصل!
"لا طريق للعودة إلي العالم ما قبل التعذيب.لا طريق للعودة إلي العالم ما قبل المذبحة.."
February 10, 2017
Another powerful book by Han Kang, author of The Vegetarian.
Some historical background: After 18 years of authoritarian rule, South Korean President Park Chung-hee was assassinated on October 26, 1979. Hopes for democracy were dashed when Army Major General Chun Do-hwan seized power in a military coup on December 12, 1979. On May 17, he placed the entire country under martial law under the pretext of national security concerns. The next day university students in Gwangju held a demonstration protesting his oppressive actions. Government troops were sent to forcefully suppress the opposition, but their brutality did not deter the citizens of Gwangju. People from all walks of life came out to defend their community. The fighting continued until May 27, when government forces succeeded in crushing the rebellion. (More detailed information on the Gwangju People's Uprising at the Korean Resource Center.)
In Human Acts, fifteen-year-old Dong-ho's best friend Jeong-dae is killed during a demonstration. Dong-ho ran for safety and feels immense guilt for leaving his friend behind ("There will be no forgiveness. Least of all for me"). The dead bodies are collected in a gymnasium so that families can walk through to find and identify their loved ones. While Dong-ho searches for his friend amongst the dead, he's recruited as a volunteer and incidentally becomes part of the rebellion. Dong-ho is killed by government troops. The chapters that follow are a collection of individual experiences all connected by the Gwangju Uprising and Dong-ho's death.
The book covers a thirty-year period, from 1980 to 2013. Each chapter is from the perspective of a different person in a different year, but they are all living with the effects of that week in 1980. We hear from Dong-ho, his best friend's spirit, an editor that deals with censors, a man and woman who were imprisoned and tortured for their political activities, and Dong Ho's mother. The epilogue is told from author Han Kang's perspective. During the time of the Gwangju Uprising, she was only 9 years old and her family had just moved from Gwangju to Seoul. While she was out of harm's way, knowledge of the event left an indelible mark on her. She writes about what compelled her to write this book and about the real-life Dong-ho.
The introduction by translator Deborah Smith provides vital historical context and notes about her translation process. She also translated The Vegetarian. Both books are relatively short, but every single word packs a punch. The writing style is accessible, but the content emotionally difficult. There's a visceral physicality to the language and I felt the impact of every word. Han Kang has a remarkable ability to sum up a person or a relationship in just a couple of sentences. That ability is showcased in the portrayal of the relationship between Jeong-dae and his sister Jeong-mi. There are so many moving scenes, but one of my favorites is in "The Editor" chapter, which details the performance of a play with a censored script. It shows how impossible it is to suppress everything. Dong-ho's confusion about the displays of patriotism in a nation where the government is attacking its own citizens and the discussion of what a nation is also made an impression on me.
The Vegetarian was the more unique reading experience, but Human Acts evoked stronger feelings in me. I prefer realism and Human Acts is more grounded, while The Vegetarian is surreal and dream-like. However, in both books characters suffer from the long-lasting effects of trauma and the desire to escape the confines of the body. There were several events in Human Acts that reminded me of The Vegetarian, especially in "The Editor" and "The Factory Girl" chapters. I think that reading The Vegetarian would be an even richer experience after reading Human Acts.
In Human Acts , people's lives suddenly become unrecognizable. Many of them feel an instinctive call to protect their freedoms and the future of their nation, even in the face of almost certain defeat. Through the characters, we explore the push and pull of nobility and barbarism on human nature. What does it mean to be human? If we aren't innately good or bad, is there a way to steer us towards our better impulses? There are several instances where a character assumes decency in another, only to be proven wrong soon after. As bleak as many of the perspectives are, Han Kang doesn't ignore the good in the people. She also writes about the helpers and the soldiers who disobeyed their orders. It's been about six months since I read this book and I still get the same pit in my stomach when I think about it. It's a tough read, but worth the time.
NOTES:
• I highly recommend reading the informative interview with Han Kang over at The White Review.
• I've read a number of books about citizen uprisings from the last seventy years that have taken place all over the world and there's a common thread that runs through most of them: United States support of these oppressive government crackdowns.
• The election of Park Chung-hee's daughter Park Geun-hye in 2013 reopened old wounds. She is currently suspended from office while undergoing impeachment proceedings.
• Related Books: Green Island (citizen uprising/martial law/brutal regimes/Asia), The Buried Giant (collective memory/scars from the past), Between the World and Me (destruction of the body).
I received this book for free from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. It's available now!
After you died I could not hold a funeral,
And so my life became a funeral.
Some historical background: After 18 years of authoritarian rule, South Korean President Park Chung-hee was assassinated on October 26, 1979. Hopes for democracy were dashed when Army Major General Chun Do-hwan seized power in a military coup on December 12, 1979. On May 17, he placed the entire country under martial law under the pretext of national security concerns. The next day university students in Gwangju held a demonstration protesting his oppressive actions. Government troops were sent to forcefully suppress the opposition, but their brutality did not deter the citizens of Gwangju. People from all walks of life came out to defend their community. The fighting continued until May 27, when government forces succeeded in crushing the rebellion. (More detailed information on the Gwangju People's Uprising at the Korean Resource Center.)
In Human Acts, fifteen-year-old Dong-ho's best friend Jeong-dae is killed during a demonstration. Dong-ho ran for safety and feels immense guilt for leaving his friend behind ("There will be no forgiveness. Least of all for me"). The dead bodies are collected in a gymnasium so that families can walk through to find and identify their loved ones. While Dong-ho searches for his friend amongst the dead, he's recruited as a volunteer and incidentally becomes part of the rebellion. Dong-ho is killed by government troops. The chapters that follow are a collection of individual experiences all connected by the Gwangju Uprising and Dong-ho's death.
Our experiences might have been similar, but they were far from identical. What good could an autopsy possibly do? How could we ever hope to understand what he went through, he himself, alone? What he'd kept locked away inside himself for all those years.
The book covers a thirty-year period, from 1980 to 2013. Each chapter is from the perspective of a different person in a different year, but they are all living with the effects of that week in 1980. We hear from Dong-ho, his best friend's spirit, an editor that deals with censors, a man and woman who were imprisoned and tortured for their political activities, and Dong Ho's mother. The epilogue is told from author Han Kang's perspective. During the time of the Gwangju Uprising, she was only 9 years old and her family had just moved from Gwangju to Seoul. While she was out of harm's way, knowledge of the event left an indelible mark on her. She writes about what compelled her to write this book and about the real-life Dong-ho.
You feel the weight of an enormous glacier bearing down on your body. You wish that you were able to flow beneath it, to become fluid, whether seawater, oil, or lava, and shuck off these rigid impermeable outlines, which encase you like a coffin. Only that way might your find some form of release.
The introduction by translator Deborah Smith provides vital historical context and notes about her translation process. She also translated The Vegetarian. Both books are relatively short, but every single word packs a punch. The writing style is accessible, but the content emotionally difficult. There's a visceral physicality to the language and I felt the impact of every word. Han Kang has a remarkable ability to sum up a person or a relationship in just a couple of sentences. That ability is showcased in the portrayal of the relationship between Jeong-dae and his sister Jeong-mi. There are so many moving scenes, but one of my favorites is in "The Editor" chapter, which details the performance of a play with a censored script. It shows how impossible it is to suppress everything. Dong-ho's confusion about the displays of patriotism in a nation where the government is attacking its own citizens and the discussion of what a nation is also made an impression on me.
At that moment, I realized what all this was for. The words that this torture and starvation were intended to elicit. We will make you realize how ridiculous it was, the lot of you waving the national flag and singing the national anthem. We will prove to you that you are nothing but filty stinking bodies. That you are no better than the carcasses of starving animals.
The Vegetarian was the more unique reading experience, but Human Acts evoked stronger feelings in me. I prefer realism and Human Acts is more grounded, while The Vegetarian is surreal and dream-like. However, in both books characters suffer from the long-lasting effects of trauma and the desire to escape the confines of the body. There were several events in Human Acts that reminded me of The Vegetarian, especially in "The Editor" and "The Factory Girl" chapters. I think that reading The Vegetarian would be an even richer experience after reading Human Acts.
Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only hinge we share as as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves this single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered--is this the essential fate of human kind, one that history has confirmed as inevitable?
In Human Acts , people's lives suddenly become unrecognizable. Many of them feel an instinctive call to protect their freedoms and the future of their nation, even in the face of almost certain defeat. Through the characters, we explore the push and pull of nobility and barbarism on human nature. What does it mean to be human? If we aren't innately good or bad, is there a way to steer us towards our better impulses? There are several instances where a character assumes decency in another, only to be proven wrong soon after. As bleak as many of the perspectives are, Han Kang doesn't ignore the good in the people. She also writes about the helpers and the soldiers who disobeyed their orders. It's been about six months since I read this book and I still get the same pit in my stomach when I think about it. It's a tough read, but worth the time.
Some of those who came to slaughter us did so with the memory of those previous times, when committing such actions in wartime won them a handsome reward. It happened in Gwangju just as it did on Jeju Island, in Kwantung and Nanjing, in Bosnia, and all across the American Continent when it was still known as the New World, with such a uniform brutality it's as through it is imprinted in our genetic code.
NOTES:
• I highly recommend reading the informative interview with Han Kang over at The White Review.
• I've read a number of books about citizen uprisings from the last seventy years that have taken place all over the world and there's a common thread that runs through most of them: United States support of these oppressive government crackdowns.
• The election of Park Chung-hee's daughter Park Geun-hye in 2013 reopened old wounds. She is currently suspended from office while undergoing impeachment proceedings.
• Related Books: Green Island (citizen uprising/martial law/brutal regimes/Asia), The Buried Giant (collective memory/scars from the past), Between the World and Me (destruction of the body).
I received this book for free from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. It's available now!
February 20, 2024
ماهي الإنسانية ؟! ماذا نفعل لنحافظ على الإنسانية بحيث تحمل مدلولا معينا وليس آخر؟
هذه الرواية من الروايات التى يصعب الحديث عنها وفى نفس الوقت يجب ان لاتمر هكذا دون الكتابة عنها على الأقل لأخراج جزء من الألم الذى شعرت به اثناء قرائتي واعلم انى لن استطيع الكتابة جيدا عنها .
عندما تكون كلمة المترجم وهو يعرفك الاحداث الحقيقية اللى حصلت فى انتفاضة غوانغجو فى كوريا فى مايو ١٩٨٠ اساسا توجعك فتخيل مدى الالم اللى فى الرواية حين تضع الاحداث وتأثيرها على لسان الشخصيات ! حين تتداخل معهم وتشعر بقلبك يتمزق ألما . و تحكى احداث مؤلمة وقمع وتعذيب للفترة التى تليها كأنهم لم يكتفوا بمن قتلوهم بل استمروا فى عمليات تشوية وتدمير للكرامة الانسانية وسحقها تماما .
أفعال عنف ارتكبت في وضح النهار من دون ذرة تردد أو ندم . قادة الجيش لم يشجعوا فقط ، بل أمروا تابعيهم من الضباط باستخدام أشكال الوحشية تلك
هى تعمي السلطة الأشخاص وتمحي ضمائرهم ومشاعرهم لهذه الدرجة ؟ بل وتمحي إنسانيتهم تماما؟
هل صحيح أن البشر قساة بالفطرة ؟ هل القسوة هى الشئ الوحيد الذي نتشاركه نحن - الجنس البشري ؟
هل أرواح البشر ودمائهم رخيصة إلى هذا الحد!!
ان تخرج من منزلك ليتم قتلك ليس بسبب معارضتك أو تظاهرك ضد السلطة ، لا بل يتم قتلك لمجرد انك وُجدت فى التوقيت والمكان الخطأ .
يتم قتلك لمجرد انك تقف فى الاتجاه المعاكس حتى لو كنت مجرد طفل ترفع ايدك ومستسلم لن تسلم من رصاصات الغدر .
ألم ترق الدماء بما فيه الكفاية ؟! كيف يمكننا التغاضي بهذه البساطة عن كل تلك الدماء؟ أرواح الراحلون تراقبنا . عيونهم مفتوحة على اتساعها
جنودنا يطلقون الرصاص . يوجهون طلقاتهم إلينا !
هذا المطر دموع تذرفها أرواح الراحلين
ودكتاتورية مابعد ذلك وحياة من شهدوا وعاشوا هذه المجزرة وكتبت لهم النجاة
حقيقة كونك الناجي الوحيد قد تكون أكثر شئ مخيف في العالم
أصارع . وحيدا أصارع كل يوم . أصارع عار أنني نجوت.أصارع حقيقة كوني إنسانا . أصارع فكرة ان الموت هو الطريقةالوحيدة للهروب من هذه الحقيقة
لماذا مات ؟
لماذا أنا حي ؟
لكن هل من لم يمت قد بقى حقا على قيد الحياة ؟؟ ام ان جسده فقط هو مازال يحيا لكن روحه قد تحطمت .
أنتظر الزمن كي يجرفني معه كتيار مياه موحلة .أنتظر الموت كي يأتي ويطهرني ، ان يعتقني من الذكري اللعينة لمن ماتوا، والتي لاتكف عن ومطاردتي ليل نهار
والسجون والتعذيب الوحشي في السجون
العملية برمتها مصممة على ادراك حقيقة واحدة بسيطة جسدي لم يعد ملكي . إن حياتى قد سلبت تماما من بين يدي ، وإن الشئ الوحيد المسموح لى بفعله هو أن أتألم . ألم مبرح جدا لدرجة أنني شعرت معها يقينا أنني سأفقد عقلى . ألم فظيع جدا لدرجة أنني فقدت السيطرة على جسمي .
و جاء الفصل الاخير تحت عنوان مصباح مغطى بالثلج ( الكاتبة ٢٠١٣ ) هان كانغ طفلة مدينة غوانغجو التى كانت فى التاسعة من عمرها فى ذلك الحين والتى سمعت حكايات الكبار رغم خفوت اصواتهم حتى لايسمعهم الصغار . وقصت علينا ماعرفته حين كبرت .
وكما كان هناك ضباط قتلة كان هناك فئة لاتزال تمتلك قلب لكنها ظلت مجزرة مخيفة .
باتت غوانغجو مرادفا لكل مايتعرض لعزلة قسرية ، وللسحق ، وللوحشية .لكل ما يشوه بشكل غير قابل للإصلاح .
هناك روايات سوداوية و روايات اجتماعية بائسة بس بالنسبالى اكثرها قسوة اللى بتبقى مبنية على احداث حقيقية وخصوصا اما تكون احداث مجازر ومعاناة بالشكل ده .
انا كنت في الاول بستنى ذكريات الماضى ماقبل الانتفاضة عشان افصل من جو المشرحة اللى انا عايشة جواه مع الرواية ، كنت حاسة انى جثة فى وسط تل الجثث الموجودة. بس بعد كده الكاتبة حرمتنى من الجزء ده لان ذكريات الماضى بقت ذكريات تلك الانتفاضة والارواح اللى زهقت والدماء التى انبثقت والتعذيب واللاانسانية .حسيت انى وسط اشخاص ضمائرهم واحاسيسهم ��اتت وتحللت من زمان .
لو كنت استطيع الاختباء في الاحلام ..
او ربما في الذكريات
بعض الذكريات لاتشفي ابدا فبدلا من ان تتلاشي مع مرور الوقت ، تصبح تلك الذكريات الشئ الوحيد الذي يبقى حين يمحى كل شئ آخر . شيئا فشيئا يظلم عالمي مثل مصابيح كهربية ينطفئ الواحد تلو الآخر . أدرك الآن أنني لست إنسانا آمنا
ارهقتنى قراءة هذه الرواية لكن لا اندم انى قرأتها .بل لو كنت اعرف شعورى وتأثرى قبل ان اقراها كنت سأصمم اكثر على قرائتها رغم مابها من عذاب وألم لكن كان يجب ان تقرأ ليس اجبارا . فتألم قرائتها لا يساوى شيئا بجانب آلام من عاشوا احداثها بالفعل .
لا طريق للعودة إلى العالم ما قبل التعذيب. لا طريق للعودة إلى العالم ما قبل المذبحة
الرواية مؤلمة وممكن يكون الرفيو خوف البعض من قرائتها لكن هى فى نفس الوقت جميلة وتستحق القراءة ، استعد نفسيا وربما تقرأ او تشاهد معها شيئا خفيفا لتخفيف الحدة . اسلوب الكاتبة ايضا اعجبنى و انتقالها ما بين الماضى والحاضر جاء بطريقة سلسلة وجيدة .
لو حد سالنى ترشحى الرواية ده لحد هقول
لو أمكننا الحفاظ على نظراتنا ثابتة حتى ترى النهاية المرة
وشكرا للمترجم ليس فقط على الترجمه لكن على المقدمة التى عرفتنى بالأحداث التى لم اكن اعرف عنها شيئا قبل قرائتي .
٩ / ١١ / ٢٠٢٠
هذه الرواية من الروايات التى يصعب الحديث عنها وفى نفس الوقت يجب ان لاتمر هكذا دون الكتابة عنها على الأقل لأخراج جزء من الألم الذى شعرت به اثناء قرائتي واعلم انى لن استطيع الكتابة جيدا عنها .
عندما تكون كلمة المترجم وهو يعرفك الاحداث الحقيقية اللى حصلت فى انتفاضة غوانغجو فى كوريا فى مايو ١٩٨٠ اساسا توجعك فتخيل مدى الالم اللى فى الرواية حين تضع الاحداث وتأثيرها على لسان الشخصيات ! حين تتداخل معهم وتشعر بقلبك يتمزق ألما . و تحكى احداث مؤلمة وقمع وتعذيب للفترة التى تليها كأنهم لم يكتفوا بمن قتلوهم بل استمروا فى عمليات تشوية وتدمير للكرامة الانسانية وسحقها تماما .
أفعال عنف ارتكبت في وضح النهار من دون ذرة تردد أو ندم . قادة الجيش لم يشجعوا فقط ، بل أمروا تابعيهم من الضباط باستخدام أشكال الوحشية تلك
هى تعمي السلطة الأشخاص وتمحي ضمائرهم ومشاعرهم لهذه الدرجة ؟ بل وتمحي إنسانيتهم تماما؟
هل صحيح أن البشر قساة بالفطرة ؟ هل القسوة هى الشئ الوحيد الذي نتشاركه نحن - الجنس البشري ؟
هل أرواح البشر ودمائهم رخيصة إلى هذا الحد!!
ان تخرج من منزلك ليتم قتلك ليس بسبب معارضتك أو تظاهرك ضد السلطة ، لا بل يتم قتلك لمجرد انك وُجدت فى التوقيت والمكان الخطأ .
يتم قتلك لمجرد انك تقف فى الاتجاه المعاكس حتى لو كنت مجرد طفل ترفع ايدك ومستسلم لن تسلم من رصاصات الغدر .
ألم ترق الدماء بما فيه الكفاية ؟! كيف يمكننا التغاضي بهذه البساطة عن كل تلك الدماء؟ أرواح الراحلون تراقبنا . عيونهم مفتوحة على اتساعها
جنودنا يطلقون الرصاص . يوجهون طلقاتهم إلينا !
هذا المطر دموع تذرفها أرواح الراحلين
ودكتاتورية مابعد ذلك وحياة من شهدوا وعاشوا هذه المجزرة وكتبت لهم النجاة
حقيقة كونك الناجي الوحيد قد تكون أكثر شئ مخيف في العالم
أصارع . وحيدا أصارع كل يوم . أصارع عار أنني نجوت.أصارع حقيقة كوني إنسانا . أصارع فكرة ان الموت هو الطريقةالوحيدة للهروب من هذه الحقيقة
لماذا مات ؟
لماذا أنا حي ؟
لكن هل من لم يمت قد بقى حقا على قيد الحياة ؟؟ ام ان جسده فقط هو مازال يحيا لكن روحه قد تحطمت .
أنتظر الزمن كي يجرفني معه كتيار مياه موحلة .أنتظر الموت كي يأتي ويطهرني ، ان يعتقني من الذكري اللعينة لمن ماتوا، والتي لاتكف عن ومطاردتي ليل نهار
والسجون والتعذيب الوحشي في السجون
العملية برمتها مصممة على ادراك حقيقة واحدة بسيطة جسدي لم يعد ملكي . إن حياتى قد سلبت تماما من بين يدي ، وإن الشئ الوحيد المسموح لى بفعله هو أن أتألم . ألم مبرح جدا لدرجة أنني شعرت معها يقينا أنني سأفقد عقلى . ألم فظيع جدا لدرجة أنني فقدت السيطرة على جسمي .
و جاء الفصل الاخير تحت عنوان مصباح مغطى بالثلج ( الكاتبة ٢٠١٣ ) هان كانغ طفلة مدينة غوانغجو التى كانت فى التاسعة من عمرها فى ذلك الحين والتى سمعت حكايات الكبار رغم خفوت اصواتهم حتى لايسمعهم الصغار . وقصت علينا ماعرفته حين كبرت .
وكما كان هناك ضباط قتلة كان هناك فئة لاتزال تمتلك قلب لكنها ظلت مجزرة مخيفة .
باتت غوانغجو مرادفا لكل مايتعرض لعزلة قسرية ، وللسحق ، وللوحشية .لكل ما يشوه بشكل غير قابل للإصلاح .
هناك روايات سوداوية و روايات اجتماعية بائسة بس بالنسبالى اكثرها قسوة اللى بتبقى مبنية على احداث حقيقية وخصوصا اما تكون احداث مجازر ومعاناة بالشكل ده .
انا كنت في الاول بستنى ذكريات الماضى ماقبل الانتفاضة عشان افصل من جو المشرحة اللى انا عايشة جواه مع الرواية ، كنت حاسة انى جثة فى وسط تل الجثث الموجودة. بس بعد كده الكاتبة حرمتنى من الجزء ده لان ذكريات الماضى بقت ذكريات تلك الانتفاضة والارواح اللى زهقت والدماء التى انبثقت والتعذيب واللاانسانية .حسيت انى وسط اشخاص ضمائرهم واحاسيسهم ��اتت وتحللت من زمان .
لو كنت استطيع الاختباء في الاحلام ..
او ربما في الذكريات
بعض الذكريات لاتشفي ابدا فبدلا من ان تتلاشي مع مرور الوقت ، تصبح تلك الذكريات الشئ الوحيد الذي يبقى حين يمحى كل شئ آخر . شيئا فشيئا يظلم عالمي مثل مصابيح كهربية ينطفئ الواحد تلو الآخر . أدرك الآن أنني لست إنسانا آمنا
ارهقتنى قراءة هذه الرواية لكن لا اندم انى قرأتها .بل لو كنت اعرف شعورى وتأثرى قبل ان اقراها كنت سأصمم اكثر على قرائتها رغم مابها من عذاب وألم لكن كان يجب ان تقرأ ليس اجبارا . فتألم قرائتها لا يساوى شيئا بجانب آلام من عاشوا احداثها بالفعل .
لا طريق للعودة إلى العالم ما قبل التعذيب. لا طريق للعودة إلى العالم ما قبل المذبحة
الرواية مؤلمة وممكن يكون الرفيو خوف البعض من قرائتها لكن هى فى نفس الوقت جميلة وتستحق القراءة ، استعد نفسيا وربما تقرأ او تشاهد معها شيئا خفيفا لتخفيف الحدة . اسلوب الكاتبة ايضا اعجبنى و انتقالها ما بين الماضى والحاضر جاء بطريقة سلسلة وجيدة .
لو حد سالنى ترشحى الرواية ده لحد هقول
لو أمكننا الحفاظ على نظراتنا ثابتة حتى ترى النهاية المرة
وشكرا للمترجم ليس فقط على الترجمه لكن على المقدمة التى عرفتنى بالأحداث التى لم اكن اعرف عنها شيئا قبل قرائتي .
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February 7, 2017
This book was pretty horrific in the sense of what happened to these kids and different people in the took. I won't lie, I didn't understand some of the ways the author wrote the story but I grasped it's meaning all the same.
This is about the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in the 80's . The author tells about really brutal deaths of people and school children. This was no peaceful protest.
There are different stories in the book that intertwine together. They are all really sad in more of a shocking way when you read it then crying your eyes out. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I was just shocked at reading about these things, the detail of how some were killed. I don't doubt anything and shouldn't be shocked at anything, there are shocking killings and things that go on today.
The story of the people that worked on the dead that were brought to hopefully be claimed by family members was sad. How they were piling up and the volunteers trying their best to clean them and cover then depending on how badly they were beaten and there were some horrific descriptions.
They have a Memorial Garden where there are graves and different memorials set up at least from what I read on the internet. I found this picture to be the most heart-wrenching and it puts across so many feelings.
Just the thought of a mother having to do that to her child because of so much stupidity, violence and ignorance makes me so sad.
I think Han Kang did a great job with this book. I really loved "The Vegetarian" but this book is on a whole other level.
Now I need to go read something happy!
*I would like to thank BloggingForBooks for a print copy of this book*
MY BLOG: Melissa Martin's Reading List
This is about the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in the 80's . The author tells about really brutal deaths of people and school children. This was no peaceful protest.
There are different stories in the book that intertwine together. They are all really sad in more of a shocking way when you read it then crying your eyes out. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I was just shocked at reading about these things, the detail of how some were killed. I don't doubt anything and shouldn't be shocked at anything, there are shocking killings and things that go on today.
The story of the people that worked on the dead that were brought to hopefully be claimed by family members was sad. How they were piling up and the volunteers trying their best to clean them and cover then depending on how badly they were beaten and there were some horrific descriptions.
How long do souls linger by the side of their bodies?
Do they really flutter away like some kind of bird? Is that what trembles the edges of the candle flame?
They have a Memorial Garden where there are graves and different memorials set up at least from what I read on the internet. I found this picture to be the most heart-wrenching and it puts across so many feelings.
I buried you with my own two hands. Removed your PE jacket and your sky-blue tracksuit bottoms, and dressed you in your dark winter uniform, over a white shirt. Tightened your belt just so and put clean gray socks on you. When they put you in a plywood coffin and loaded it up onto the rubbish truck, I said I'd ride at the front to watch over you.
Just the thought of a mother having to do that to her child because of so much stupidity, violence and ignorance makes me so sad.
I think Han Kang did a great job with this book. I really loved "The Vegetarian" but this book is on a whole other level.
Now I need to go read something happy!
*I would like to thank BloggingForBooks for a print copy of this book*
MY BLOG: Melissa Martin's Reading List
March 31, 2020
Esta ha sido una lectura difícil y muy dura, y al mismo tiempo no he podido parar de leer desde que la comencé.
La novela relata desde diferentes puntos de vistas, de personajes encontrados (más conocidos o menos) la sublevación popular en la ciudad de Gwangju durante los años 80 que terminó en masacre por la terrible respuesta del ejército.
El libro es muy pesimista.
Habla de la capacidad del ser humano para la violencia, la crueldad, la falta de "humanidad"... A mi me ha gustado muchísimo, no solo por aprender un poco de ese pedazo terrible de la Histoira de Corea del Sur, sino por lo bien que está narrado, por esa estructura a través de la que vas avanzando en el tiempo y conociendo a sus personajes, las diferentes voces (en primera, segunda o tercera persona) que te apelan como lector y te ponen en situaciones terribles... A veces es seca, a veces emotiva pero nunca excesiva a pesar de relatar hechos excesivos.
Me ha marcado la reflexión de que la gente que ha soportado este nivel de sufrimiento jamás se recupera, y el daño hecho no se cura sino que crece y cambia de diferentes maneras con el paso del tiempo.
En fin, una novela que me ha dejado muy tocada. Me ha gustado muchísimo y sin duda seguiré leyendo a Han Kang porque a pesar de todo lo que había escuchado ya de ella ha logrado sorprenderme para bien.
La novela relata desde diferentes puntos de vistas, de personajes encontrados (más conocidos o menos) la sublevación popular en la ciudad de Gwangju durante los años 80 que terminó en masacre por la terrible respuesta del ejército.
El libro es muy pesimista.
Habla de la capacidad del ser humano para la violencia, la crueldad, la falta de "humanidad"... A mi me ha gustado muchísimo, no solo por aprender un poco de ese pedazo terrible de la Histoira de Corea del Sur, sino por lo bien que está narrado, por esa estructura a través de la que vas avanzando en el tiempo y conociendo a sus personajes, las diferentes voces (en primera, segunda o tercera persona) que te apelan como lector y te ponen en situaciones terribles... A veces es seca, a veces emotiva pero nunca excesiva a pesar de relatar hechos excesivos.
Me ha marcado la reflexión de que la gente que ha soportado este nivel de sufrimiento jamás se recupera, y el daño hecho no se cura sino que crece y cambia de diferentes maneras con el paso del tiempo.
En fin, una novela que me ha dejado muy tocada. Me ha gustado muchísimo y sin duda seguiré leyendo a Han Kang porque a pesar de todo lo que había escuchado ya de ella ha logrado sorprenderme para bien.
November 25, 2020
A visceral book about trauma and the ripple effects violence has on survivors, similar to the effects of a nuclear explosion, impacting people a long time after the facts themselves.
Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't even realized was there.
The 1980 Gwangju Uprising of students fighting for democracy and better worker rights, forms the hart of this novel. Almost 2.000 people are thought to have died in resistance to the military dictatorship: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwang...
I mention the Wikipedia page of the event above, because I at least had no idea about the atrocity of the dictatorship in South Korea during this period.
Feelings of loss, survivor guilt and trauma abound in this book. One of the characters muses the following: After you died I could not hold a funeral. And so my life became a funeral.
The brutality of the suppression of the protest is chilling, from cigarette burns on eyelids, vaginal insertion of objects leading to infertility, bajonet stabbings, removing of fingernails, constant beatings, waterboarding, shootings of schoolchildren who surrendered, food deprivation and continuous forcing of a pen in someones hand till the bone is exposed.
No wonder the stories of survivors, loosely tied around a schoolboy who died during the protests and who is the You in most of the book, fall into depression, obsession, isolation, alcoholism or suicide. Even years later nightmares pervade their sleep, if they manage to get any. We also get the tale of the boy himself, his observation of the decay of his own body, being amongst hundreds rotting away after being dragged to a sport centre by garbage trucks.
The account of one of the prisoners was most chilling, with him reflecting on the wish to no longer have or be a body, to erase oneself if only to no longer feel pain and no longer being reduced to a clump of meat:
“Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?”
The author makes you feel that surviving, instead of dying through being shot in resistance to the regime, could be called a worse fate. The book made me think of both 1984 and its torture scenes and the bleakness of The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Remembrance is seen as a way out, bearing witness and reminding the world of the atrocities as a means to find purpose and humanity.
But in no way does that feel easy or simple in the face of such violence that people do against each other, everyday in so many anonymous headlines in the newspapers.
Chilling and unsettling, like a gut punch,Human Acts by Han Kang is a second five star read of the author, after the more intimate but equally brutal The Vegetarian.
Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't even realized was there.
The 1980 Gwangju Uprising of students fighting for democracy and better worker rights, forms the hart of this novel. Almost 2.000 people are thought to have died in resistance to the military dictatorship: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwang...
I mention the Wikipedia page of the event above, because I at least had no idea about the atrocity of the dictatorship in South Korea during this period.
Feelings of loss, survivor guilt and trauma abound in this book. One of the characters muses the following: After you died I could not hold a funeral. And so my life became a funeral.
The brutality of the suppression of the protest is chilling, from cigarette burns on eyelids, vaginal insertion of objects leading to infertility, bajonet stabbings, removing of fingernails, constant beatings, waterboarding, shootings of schoolchildren who surrendered, food deprivation and continuous forcing of a pen in someones hand till the bone is exposed.
No wonder the stories of survivors, loosely tied around a schoolboy who died during the protests and who is the You in most of the book, fall into depression, obsession, isolation, alcoholism or suicide. Even years later nightmares pervade their sleep, if they manage to get any. We also get the tale of the boy himself, his observation of the decay of his own body, being amongst hundreds rotting away after being dragged to a sport centre by garbage trucks.
The account of one of the prisoners was most chilling, with him reflecting on the wish to no longer have or be a body, to erase oneself if only to no longer feel pain and no longer being reduced to a clump of meat:
“Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?”
The author makes you feel that surviving, instead of dying through being shot in resistance to the regime, could be called a worse fate. The book made me think of both 1984 and its torture scenes and the bleakness of The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Remembrance is seen as a way out, bearing witness and reminding the world of the atrocities as a means to find purpose and humanity.
But in no way does that feel easy or simple in the face of such violence that people do against each other, everyday in so many anonymous headlines in the newspapers.
Chilling and unsettling, like a gut punch,Human Acts by Han Kang is a second five star read of the author, after the more intimate but equally brutal The Vegetarian.
March 11, 2021
Heartbreaking and beautiful. Between this and The Vegetarian, Han Kang has positioned herself as one of the strongest and most thought-provoking writers of our age.
February 7, 2017
Human Acts was my second Han Kang book, and honestly I couldn't fault it. I rarely give out 5 star ratings, but I just couldn't find anything to dislike about this book.
Human Acts is based on real-life historical events, where Kang depicts the lives of several characters who are all connected by the events of the suppressed student uprising in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980. Each perspective travels a little further through time to show how incredibly painful and far-reaching the events of the uprising were, and how much they have affected people's lives as a result.
This book is harrowing to read. Although I wouldn't say I felt sad or emotional reading it, it is perhaps more accurate to say that the feeling I experienced while reading was that of complete and utter emptiness. At one point in the book, I even felt my stomach churn with the stress of what I was reading. The violence in this book, although not overkill, is often brutal and unflinching in its depiction, and the emotions of the characters come through so strongly.
I really loved the way that the characters and their stories were interlinked throughout the years. Often I wouldn't immediately recognise the links, as it was a little hard at times for me to keep track of the different Korean names, but the discovery of who each narrative followed was like a little bit of treasure that I had dug up myself. And the translation of this book should really be applauded - Deborah Smith has once again done a fantastic job of representing Han Kang's prose. It is minimalistic but also beautiful, stark and to-the-point, and I loved the fact that in her introduction to the book not only did she provide some historical context (which I followed up with some googling of course), but also commented on her approach at translating different South Korean dialects that Kang had used, in order to keep it as loyal to the original text as possible.
This wasn't an enjoyable read at all, but I do think it is an important one, and I found out about a section of history that I probably would never have learnt about otherwise. It is horrible to think that these events actually happened, and the depths of the depravity that some people will go too - the book was truly eye-opening, and a fantastic read that should be picked up by everyone.
Human Acts is based on real-life historical events, where Kang depicts the lives of several characters who are all connected by the events of the suppressed student uprising in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980. Each perspective travels a little further through time to show how incredibly painful and far-reaching the events of the uprising were, and how much they have affected people's lives as a result.
This book is harrowing to read. Although I wouldn't say I felt sad or emotional reading it, it is perhaps more accurate to say that the feeling I experienced while reading was that of complete and utter emptiness. At one point in the book, I even felt my stomach churn with the stress of what I was reading. The violence in this book, although not overkill, is often brutal and unflinching in its depiction, and the emotions of the characters come through so strongly.
I really loved the way that the characters and their stories were interlinked throughout the years. Often I wouldn't immediately recognise the links, as it was a little hard at times for me to keep track of the different Korean names, but the discovery of who each narrative followed was like a little bit of treasure that I had dug up myself. And the translation of this book should really be applauded - Deborah Smith has once again done a fantastic job of representing Han Kang's prose. It is minimalistic but also beautiful, stark and to-the-point, and I loved the fact that in her introduction to the book not only did she provide some historical context (which I followed up with some googling of course), but also commented on her approach at translating different South Korean dialects that Kang had used, in order to keep it as loyal to the original text as possible.
This wasn't an enjoyable read at all, but I do think it is an important one, and I found out about a section of history that I probably would never have learnt about otherwise. It is horrible to think that these events actually happened, and the depths of the depravity that some people will go too - the book was truly eye-opening, and a fantastic read that should be picked up by everyone.
February 10, 2017
Humanity's essential barbarism is exacerbated not by the especially barbaric nature of any of the individuals involved but through that magnification which occurs naturally in crowds
.
The Putrefying Bodies piled up into one massive heap, fused in a single mass like the rotting carcass of some multi-legged monster, the blood of its collective hearts surging together into one enormous artery stained the streets in a congealed pool of crimson. Throughout human history, the brutality of wars has repeatedly draped itself over the earth, a uniform brutality it's as though it is imprinted in our genetic code, and so sustained and cyclical in human nature, it seems futile to expect such acts will ever cease. Under martial law - much like Taiwan's White Terror in 1947, or China's Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, - savage human rights violations (and denial of burial rites) happened in Gwangju in 1980 during a gruesome ten day debacle, transforming the South Korean city into a human slaughterhouse.
Readers of Han Kang's The Vegetarian might recognize similar images of the human body being violated and eviscerated like animal meat. Though the gore is hardly restrained in the opening chapters of Human Acts, the reader is nevertheless mesmerized, compelled to turn the page. Less a political discourse on oppressive and torturous actions of an authoritarian regime, the novel questions the axis of good and evil in mankind, the strength of human conscience as a collective force, and weighs the value of human loss to those left in the living. In eloquent prose that is an assured testament to the talents of both the author and her translator, Human Acts meanders through time-shifts spanning thirty three years, and narratives that swiftly transition between the perspectives of its characters....
The struggle against power was the memory's struggle against forgetting.(Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera).
The native writer succeeds where the conscientious writer must: to remove the muzzle of silence and empower the voiceless masses in this world (or the other). When I think of those ten days in the life of that city, I think of the moment when a man who'd been lynched, almost killed, found the strength to open his eyes. This moment when, spitting out fragments of teeth along with a mouthful of blood, he held his failing eyes open with his fingers so that he could look his attacker straight in the face. The moment when he appeared to remember that he had a face and a voice, to recollect his own dignity, which seemed the memory of a previous life. She writes to preserve the memory of the hundreds of souls that fluttered away in 1980, like some kind of bird; to lead those struggling in the cold and darkness of their past, to a place where the light shines through to where the flowers bloom.
Author Han Kang and translator Deborah Smith were awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for The Vegetarian. Their second collaboration, Human Acts is a lyrical healing anthem to a wounded nation and a powerful message to humankind to clean up its act. For me, even more remarkable than their first, this novel is not to be missed.
read about the hit-power of this novel
The Putrefying Bodies piled up into one massive heap, fused in a single mass like the rotting carcass of some multi-legged monster, the blood of its collective hearts surging together into one enormous artery stained the streets in a congealed pool of crimson. Throughout human history, the brutality of wars has repeatedly draped itself over the earth, a uniform brutality it's as though it is imprinted in our genetic code, and so sustained and cyclical in human nature, it seems futile to expect such acts will ever cease. Under martial law - much like Taiwan's White Terror in 1947, or China's Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, - savage human rights violations (and denial of burial rites) happened in Gwangju in 1980 during a gruesome ten day debacle, transforming the South Korean city into a human slaughterhouse.
Readers of Han Kang's The Vegetarian might recognize similar images of the human body being violated and eviscerated like animal meat. Though the gore is hardly restrained in the opening chapters of Human Acts, the reader is nevertheless mesmerized, compelled to turn the page. Less a political discourse on oppressive and torturous actions of an authoritarian regime, the novel questions the axis of good and evil in mankind, the strength of human conscience as a collective force, and weighs the value of human loss to those left in the living. In eloquent prose that is an assured testament to the talents of both the author and her translator, Human Acts meanders through time-shifts spanning thirty three years, and narratives that swiftly transition between the perspectives of its characters....
Was it horrifying, for you, Dong-ho, the boy no more than 15 years old, walking among the dead, tallying up the corpses as the putrid stink permeated through the bloodstained national flags that draped them?Why would you sing the national anthem for people who have been killed by soldiers? As though it wasn't the nation itself that had murdered them? Yet, this doesn't phase you as much as the sickening, dreadful need to find your friend out there. ....What terror you must have felt at having just been knocked from your body, the boy's friend ponders, while adapting to his strange new 'existence or nonexistence', like other souls hovering between light and shade , adrift, haunting the edges of the living, left to float aimlessly. How long do souls linger by the side of their bodies? Do they really flutter away like some kind of bird? Is that what trembles the edges of the candle flame? Does it mean I would now only exist in dreams..Or perhaps in memories? Do the survivors remember the dead in dreams? No... in nightmares, in the guilt and the shame such as the editor suffered everyday for the last five years. It occurred to her...that there was something shameful about eating....she thought of the dead, for whom the absence of life meant that they would never be hungry again. But life still lingered on for her, with hunger still a yoke around her neck. Through burning tears, she endured the publisher's abuse in silent revolt, while quietly echoing the censored words no longer readable in the manuscript she holds, After you died I could not hold a funeral, And so my life became a funeral. The death constantly disturbed the prisoner, Why did he die, while I'm still alive? We shared the same cell, were tortured the same brutal way , we ate the same meals - was it that he suffered more than me? .....Every day I fight with the fact of my humanity. Why was I left behind in this hell? thought the boy's mother - chasing you through the market square, but can never catch up with you, because I buried your bloodless body with my own two hands thirty years ago. You were so afraid of the darkness between the trees, on our walks by the riverside. You tugged at my hand, urging, "It's sunny over there, Mum,... Why are we walking in the dark, let's go over there, where the flowers are blooming." The memory stabs me like the cold steel of a bayonet, I can never forget it. Never forget, is why the writer, thirty three years later, interviewed the survivors and penned a requiem to memorialize the forsaken.
The struggle against power was the memory's struggle against forgetting.(Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera).
The native writer succeeds where the conscientious writer must: to remove the muzzle of silence and empower the voiceless masses in this world (or the other). When I think of those ten days in the life of that city, I think of the moment when a man who'd been lynched, almost killed, found the strength to open his eyes. This moment when, spitting out fragments of teeth along with a mouthful of blood, he held his failing eyes open with his fingers so that he could look his attacker straight in the face. The moment when he appeared to remember that he had a face and a voice, to recollect his own dignity, which seemed the memory of a previous life. She writes to preserve the memory of the hundreds of souls that fluttered away in 1980, like some kind of bird; to lead those struggling in the cold and darkness of their past, to a place where the light shines through to where the flowers bloom.
Author Han Kang and translator Deborah Smith were awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for The Vegetarian. Their second collaboration, Human Acts is a lyrical healing anthem to a wounded nation and a powerful message to humankind to clean up its act. For me, even more remarkable than their first, this novel is not to be missed.
read about the hit-power of this novel
March 2, 2021
çok iyi. çok sert. çok acı.
vejataryen'den çok daha fazla beğendim.
yazılacak çok şey var, yazılmış da zaten kitapla ilgili çıkan yazılarda.
çorum, maraş, gezi, cizre, suruç... daha neler neler... kaç yıllık katliamları sayalım. hadi 1915'e dersim'e girmiyorum, tarihsel olarak romanla aynı olsun 70'ler sonrası...
kore dizileri izleyip duran eşim çok benzediğimizi söylüyor, bu romanda da 80 yılında sivillerin askerler tarafından öldürülmesine verilen tepkiler, anneler, sessizce konuşan öğretmen ailesi, öncesinde işçi hareketleri... o kadar benziyor ki. hep aklıma gezi sonrası el ele tutuşan anneler geldi mesela.
neyse...
roman parça parça yapısıyla, ilk bölümde tanıdığımız 4 karakteri yavaş yavaş açan farklı anlatıcılarla ilerleyen bölümleri, sert anlatımıyla çok güçlü bir roman. 2. tekil kişili anlatımı hiç sevmem, o bile uymuş bu sert romana. böylesi işkence sahnelerini yıllardır okumuyorum.
çevirenin, yayıma hazırlayanların ellerine sağlık çünkü koreceden çevirmek ve türkçeye uyarlayabilmek çok zor, biliyorum.
keşke... keşke son yıllarda yaşadıklarımızı anlatan iyi bir roman yazılsa bunun gibi.
bir umut.
vejataryen'den çok daha fazla beğendim.
yazılacak çok şey var, yazılmış da zaten kitapla ilgili çıkan yazılarda.
çorum, maraş, gezi, cizre, suruç... daha neler neler... kaç yıllık katliamları sayalım. hadi 1915'e dersim'e girmiyorum, tarihsel olarak romanla aynı olsun 70'ler sonrası...
kore dizileri izleyip duran eşim çok benzediğimizi söylüyor, bu romanda da 80 yılında sivillerin askerler tarafından öldürülmesine verilen tepkiler, anneler, sessizce konuşan öğretmen ailesi, öncesinde işçi hareketleri... o kadar benziyor ki. hep aklıma gezi sonrası el ele tutuşan anneler geldi mesela.
neyse...
roman parça parça yapısıyla, ilk bölümde tanıdığımız 4 karakteri yavaş yavaş açan farklı anlatıcılarla ilerleyen bölümleri, sert anlatımıyla çok güçlü bir roman. 2. tekil kişili anlatımı hiç sevmem, o bile uymuş bu sert romana. böylesi işkence sahnelerini yıllardır okumuyorum.
çevirenin, yayıma hazırlayanların ellerine sağlık çünkü koreceden çevirmek ve türkçeye uyarlayabilmek çok zor, biliyorum.
keşke... keşke son yıllarda yaşadıklarımızı anlatan iyi bir roman yazılsa bunun gibi.
bir umut.
March 15, 2020
Después de leer esta pedazo de obra maestra, confirmo a Han Kang como una de mis autoras predilectas. La vegetariana fue una novela espectacular que me hizo sentir cosas que pocas habían conseguido hasta ese momento. Su sombra era muy alargada y, sin embargo, Actos Humanos es igualmente espectacular. No sabría decir cual de las dos novelas me parece mejor.
Hablar de este libro me resulta muy complicado, por todo lo que me ha hecho sentir. En él, Han Kang nos va a sumergir en una historia real. En 1980, los jóvenes universitarios salían a las calles de Gwangju a manifestarse en contra de la dictadura que vivían, reclamando una democracia. El gobierno dictatorial liderado por Chun Doo-hwan, mando al ejército con la orden de acabar con las protestas masacrándolos a todos.
Es curioso pensar que que de este suceso solo hace unos 40 años y que es una fecha histórica muy desconocida. Al menos, en Occidente lo es. Y la barbarie fue de tal tamaño y tuvo una censura tan grande durante años para ocultarlo, que aún me llama más la atención que haya tenido que ser Han Kang en los 2010s la encargada de contar esto al mundo.
Han Kang, que nació en Gwangju, va a valerse de personas reales que vivieron o padecieron esta gran matanza, para contarnos una historia espectacular. Dura, cruda e impactante, las páginas de este libro te absorven completamente desde las primeras palabras a las últimas. Por más duro que sea lo que lees, no puedes soltar el libro. Personajes como Dongho, Eunsuk o Seonju te transmiten todos estos sentimientos de pena, miedo, tristeza, dolor e incomprensión, a la perfección.
Me ha gustado mucho que la historia no solo se centre en el hecho y lo duro que fue, si no que haga hincapié en una realidad pocas veces exploradas, esas heridas abiertas, raramente se cierran, y las personas que sobrevivieron a aquello, tuvieron que aprender a vivir con ello y no todos lo consiguieron. Han pasado 40 años, pero la violencia sigue muy viva.
Las reflexiones del libro tienen bastante en común con La vegetariana y es que ambos exploran la violencia del ser humano. ¿Es el ser humano bueno por naturaleza y la sociedad lo vuelve violento? ¿O muchos son violentos porque es algo tan natural en el ser humano la bondad? Impactante.
En fin, una gran JOYA, que todo el mundo debería leer. Pocas autoras tan enormes como Han Kang he visto y sentido. Necesito que se traduzca TODO lo que ha escrito esta mujer, por dios <3.
Hablar de este libro me resulta muy complicado, por todo lo que me ha hecho sentir. En él, Han Kang nos va a sumergir en una historia real. En 1980, los jóvenes universitarios salían a las calles de Gwangju a manifestarse en contra de la dictadura que vivían, reclamando una democracia. El gobierno dictatorial liderado por Chun Doo-hwan, mando al ejército con la orden de acabar con las protestas masacrándolos a todos.
Es curioso pensar que que de este suceso solo hace unos 40 años y que es una fecha histórica muy desconocida. Al menos, en Occidente lo es. Y la barbarie fue de tal tamaño y tuvo una censura tan grande durante años para ocultarlo, que aún me llama más la atención que haya tenido que ser Han Kang en los 2010s la encargada de contar esto al mundo.
Han Kang, que nació en Gwangju, va a valerse de personas reales que vivieron o padecieron esta gran matanza, para contarnos una historia espectacular. Dura, cruda e impactante, las páginas de este libro te absorven completamente desde las primeras palabras a las últimas. Por más duro que sea lo que lees, no puedes soltar el libro. Personajes como Dongho, Eunsuk o Seonju te transmiten todos estos sentimientos de pena, miedo, tristeza, dolor e incomprensión, a la perfección.
Me ha gustado mucho que la historia no solo se centre en el hecho y lo duro que fue, si no que haga hincapié en una realidad pocas veces exploradas, esas heridas abiertas, raramente se cierran, y las personas que sobrevivieron a aquello, tuvieron que aprender a vivir con ello y no todos lo consiguieron. Han pasado 40 años, pero la violencia sigue muy viva.
Las reflexiones del libro tienen bastante en común con La vegetariana y es que ambos exploran la violencia del ser humano. ¿Es el ser humano bueno por naturaleza y la sociedad lo vuelve violento? ¿O muchos son violentos porque es algo tan natural en el ser humano la bondad? Impactante.
En fin, una gran JOYA, que todo el mundo debería leer. Pocas autoras tan enormes como Han Kang he visto y sentido. Necesito que se traduzca TODO lo que ha escrito esta mujer, por dios <3.
January 30, 2019
The novel at first felt fragmentary, stuttering, hesitant, and understated, but as I read along every sentence, every thought built upon the last, until the story became not only a interwoven chronicle of wrenching human happenings, but also an examination of how humans behave toward one another; how people behave in crowds; how human beings survive trauma (or not); and how they find meaning in the aftermath of unrelenting tragedy.
There was nothing cinematic about the treatment of the Gwangju massacre here. There is not much resembling what you might call a 'scene.' Instead the story builds on one small detail after another. The voices interweave in surprising ways. The structure serves to graphically illustrate the interconnection of human beings, as well as the fragility of these connections--people are separated by death, by experience, by class and gender and age, no matter how much they try to remain connected.
I was very surprised at how this novel worked--surprised that it worked at all. I was surprised at how gut-punchingly sad the revelations in the second chapter were, even though the chapter was narrated by a ghost, and the tragedy the ghost tells is told obliquely, not graphically; even so the story in this chapter left me defenseless when it came to the unexpected death of one of the characters.
The nature of obligation and conscience and of right and wrong kept prodding my thinking as I read. Characters wonder aloud about humanity's ability to be inhumane; about their ability to be compassionate.
I cried a few times.
The final chapter was for me a masterful way of wrenching the story from the realm of fiction and into the real world, where it belongs.
There was nothing cinematic about the treatment of the Gwangju massacre here. There is not much resembling what you might call a 'scene.' Instead the story builds on one small detail after another. The voices interweave in surprising ways. The structure serves to graphically illustrate the interconnection of human beings, as well as the fragility of these connections--people are separated by death, by experience, by class and gender and age, no matter how much they try to remain connected.
I was very surprised at how this novel worked--surprised that it worked at all. I was surprised at how gut-punchingly sad the revelations in the second chapter were, even though the chapter was narrated by a ghost, and the tragedy the ghost tells is told obliquely, not graphically; even so the story in this chapter left me defenseless when it came to the unexpected death of one of the characters.
The nature of obligation and conscience and of right and wrong kept prodding my thinking as I read. Characters wonder aloud about humanity's ability to be inhumane; about their ability to be compassionate.
I cried a few times.
The final chapter was for me a masterful way of wrenching the story from the realm of fiction and into the real world, where it belongs.
February 29, 2016
Human Acts is the author Han Kang's attempt to make some kind of peace with the knowledge and images of the Gwangju massacre in South Korea in 1980. Her family had left that city just one year before when she was 10 years old, when the 10 day uprising occurred, but she became aware of it through the overheard, whispered conversations of her family and the silence that surrounded them speaking of the home where they used to live, she learned three young people from that household had lost their lives, one, a boy Dong-Ho probably shared the same room she had lived in for many more years than he had.
What made the events sear into her mind and perhaps permanently affect her psyche, was the forbidden photobook that was given to her family, books circulated secretly to let survivors know what had really happened, a book her parents tried to hide from their children, but one she sought out, opening its covers to images she would be forever haunted by.
Asked why she felt motivated to write this book (my thanks to Naomi at The Writes of Women for her post on the author/book discussion at Foyles Bookshop), which begins with the immediate after-effects of the massacre, the very real logistical management of the bodies, the bereaved, mass memorial rituals and the burials and goes on to enter the after death consciousness of one the victims, seeing things from outside his body; she said that that experience of seeing those images left her scared, afraid of human cruelty, struggling to embrace human beings.
It left her with two internal questions below, which were her motivation to enter into this experience and try to write her way out of and the external events of that massacre of the past in her birthplace of Gwangju and then the more recent social cleansing that took place in the Yongsan area of Seoul in 2009:
1. How can human beings be so violent?
2. How could people do something against extreme violence?
Human Acts, which seems to me to be an interesting play on words, is divided into six chapters (or Acts), each from the perspective of a different character affected by the massacre and also using a variety of different narrative voices.
The opening chapter entitled The Boy, 1980 introduces us to Dong-Ho, but seen from outside himself, written in the second person singular narrative voice 'You'. It is after the initial violence in the square and something has driven this boy, initially searching for the body of his friend who he witnessed being shot on the first day, to volunteer and help out, confronting him in a visceral way with so much more death and tragedy than he had escaped from on the day itself.
We meet the shadow of his friend in the second chapter, as he exits his body, but is unable to escape it, he tries to understand what is happening around him and observes his shattered body and others as they arrive, until something happens that will release him wherupon he senses the death of those close to him, his friend and his sister.
The following chapters skip years, but never the prolonged effect of what happened, the events never leave those scarred by them, the narrative works its way back to the origins of the uprising, to the factory girl, the hard working, little educated group of young women trying to improve their lot, to obtain fair wages and equal rights, the become bolder when they meet in groups and speak of protesting, they educate themselves and each other and feel part of something, a movement and a feeling they wish to express publicly, with the naive assumption they won't be arrested or killed.
It brings us back to humanity's tendency to group, to find common interests, to progress as a team with common interests, to support each other and to the tendency of those in power to feel angry, threatened and violent towards those who have an equal ability to amass support, regardless of the merits of their cause.
Han Kang so immersed herself in these stories and events, that it is as if we are reading the experience of a holocaust survivor, a torture sufferer; we know only a little of what it must be like to live with the memory and the reluctance to want to share it and the heavy price that some pay when they do.
I remember Primo Levi's If This Is a Man / The Truce, a memoir, and his words, which could easily have been a guide for Han Kang herself, in the way she has approached this incredibly moving, heart-shattering novel. It seems a fitting note on which to conclude this review, to recall his words and his intention in setting things down on paper.
What made the events sear into her mind and perhaps permanently affect her psyche, was the forbidden photobook that was given to her family, books circulated secretly to let survivors know what had really happened, a book her parents tried to hide from their children, but one she sought out, opening its covers to images she would be forever haunted by.
Asked why she felt motivated to write this book (my thanks to Naomi at The Writes of Women for her post on the author/book discussion at Foyles Bookshop), which begins with the immediate after-effects of the massacre, the very real logistical management of the bodies, the bereaved, mass memorial rituals and the burials and goes on to enter the after death consciousness of one the victims, seeing things from outside his body; she said that that experience of seeing those images left her scared, afraid of human cruelty, struggling to embrace human beings.
It left her with two internal questions below, which were her motivation to enter into this experience and try to write her way out of and the external events of that massacre of the past in her birthplace of Gwangju and then the more recent social cleansing that took place in the Yongsan area of Seoul in 2009:
1. How can human beings be so violent?
2. How could people do something against extreme violence?
Human Acts, which seems to me to be an interesting play on words, is divided into six chapters (or Acts), each from the perspective of a different character affected by the massacre and also using a variety of different narrative voices.
The opening chapter entitled The Boy, 1980 introduces us to Dong-Ho, but seen from outside himself, written in the second person singular narrative voice 'You'. It is after the initial violence in the square and something has driven this boy, initially searching for the body of his friend who he witnessed being shot on the first day, to volunteer and help out, confronting him in a visceral way with so much more death and tragedy than he had escaped from on the day itself.
We meet the shadow of his friend in the second chapter, as he exits his body, but is unable to escape it, he tries to understand what is happening around him and observes his shattered body and others as they arrive, until something happens that will release him wherupon he senses the death of those close to him, his friend and his sister.
The following chapters skip years, but never the prolonged effect of what happened, the events never leave those scarred by them, the narrative works its way back to the origins of the uprising, to the factory girl, the hard working, little educated group of young women trying to improve their lot, to obtain fair wages and equal rights, the become bolder when they meet in groups and speak of protesting, they educate themselves and each other and feel part of something, a movement and a feeling they wish to express publicly, with the naive assumption they won't be arrested or killed.
It brings us back to humanity's tendency to group, to find common interests, to progress as a team with common interests, to support each other and to the tendency of those in power to feel angry, threatened and violent towards those who have an equal ability to amass support, regardless of the merits of their cause.
Han Kang so immersed herself in these stories and events, that it is as if we are reading the experience of a holocaust survivor, a torture sufferer; we know only a little of what it must be like to live with the memory and the reluctance to want to share it and the heavy price that some pay when they do.
I remember Primo Levi's If This Is a Man / The Truce, a memoir, and his words, which could easily have been a guide for Han Kang herself, in the way she has approached this incredibly moving, heart-shattering novel. It seems a fitting note on which to conclude this review, to recall his words and his intention in setting things down on paper.
I believe in reason and in discussion as supreme instruments of progress, and therefore I repress hatred even within myself: I prefer justice. Precisely for this reason, when describing the tragic world of Auschwitz, I have deliberately assumed the calm, sober language of the witness, neither the lamenting tones of the victim nor the irate voice of someone who seeks revenge. I thought that my account would be all the more credible and useful the more it appeared objective and the less it sounded overly emotional; only in this way does a witness in matters of justice perform his task, which is that of preparing the ground for the judge. The judges are my readers. Primo Levi
August 23, 2018
Aquí la videoreseña: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mzI2...
¿Qué decir de este libro? No tengo muchas palabras. Palabras dignas de esta novela no, al menos. Me ha roto el corazón tres millones de veces y aún así creo que leerlo ha sido una gran experiencia.
Han Kang tiene un don para hacerte vivir las experiencias de sus personajes, aunque no entiendas bien lo que ocurre o lo que pasa por su cabeza, Kang consigue que empatices. Es capaz de relatarte lo peor de forma casi poética sin que dejes en ningún momento de ver la oscuridad, la suciedad, el cieno que se aposenta en el fondo.
Me puse a leer esta novela sin saber nada de los hechos que narra y puedo decir que si bien al principio me costó un poco entender algunas cosas (más que nada porque soy malísima recordando nombres coreanos) al final todo cobró sentido y la unión de los distintos personajes, quiénes son y cómo se conectan exactamente, me pareció casi lo más interesante del libro.
Hay retazos de fantasía (uno de los personajes es un alma), pero no por ello creo que la novela pertenezca al género fantástico. No es realismo mágico, es solo un mecanismo narrativo que la autora utiliza en un punto determinado (y de forma muy efectiva) para desarrollar y ampliar el relato.
Al final, lo importante es averiguar la verdad. Desenterrar un crimen que aún tiene resonancias en la Corea del Sur actual y que no debería olvidarse. Porque algunas heridas no cierran nunca.
¿Qué decir de este libro? No tengo muchas palabras. Palabras dignas de esta novela no, al menos. Me ha roto el corazón tres millones de veces y aún así creo que leerlo ha sido una gran experiencia.
Han Kang tiene un don para hacerte vivir las experiencias de sus personajes, aunque no entiendas bien lo que ocurre o lo que pasa por su cabeza, Kang consigue que empatices. Es capaz de relatarte lo peor de forma casi poética sin que dejes en ningún momento de ver la oscuridad, la suciedad, el cieno que se aposenta en el fondo.
Me puse a leer esta novela sin saber nada de los hechos que narra y puedo decir que si bien al principio me costó un poco entender algunas cosas (más que nada porque soy malísima recordando nombres coreanos) al final todo cobró sentido y la unión de los distintos personajes, quiénes son y cómo se conectan exactamente, me pareció casi lo más interesante del libro.
Hay retazos de fantasía (uno de los personajes es un alma), pero no por ello creo que la novela pertenezca al género fantástico. No es realismo mágico, es solo un mecanismo narrativo que la autora utiliza en un punto determinado (y de forma muy efectiva) para desarrollar y ampliar el relato.
Al final, lo importante es averiguar la verdad. Desenterrar un crimen que aún tiene resonancias en la Corea del Sur actual y que no debería olvidarse. Porque algunas heridas no cierran nunca.
December 25, 2016
This is a sombre and deeply moving book, which bears witness to the brutal suppression of an uprising that took place in 1980 in the city of Gwangju in the south of South Korea (where Han Kang was born), an event I knew nothing about.
It reminded me a little of Vasily Grossman and his account of the Ukrainian famine in Everything Flows - this book has the same unflinching attention to gruesome detail, and as such was not an ideal choice to read over Christmas, but it is a book that is haunting and memorable.
It reminded me a little of Vasily Grossman and his account of the Ukrainian famine in Everything Flows - this book has the same unflinching attention to gruesome detail, and as such was not an ideal choice to read over Christmas, but it is a book that is haunting and memorable.
September 18, 2019
4.5-5*
Ha pasado un mes desde que terminé este libro y aún no sé cómo hablar de él...
La novela está basada en hechos reales, situada en Corea del Sur en 1980, y centrada en el genocidio de Gwangju (manifestaciones a favor de la democracia que tuvieron una fortísima represión policial que acabó con miles de muertos y desaparecidos).
La historia está dividida en capítulos narrados por personajes distintos y en orden cronológico hasta el día de hoy, todos centrados en el impacto que siguen teniendo hoy en día aquellos sucesos .
El primer capítulo es el catalizador de la novela: Dong-ho es un estudiante de secundaria que en plena manifestación, aterrorizado, suelta la mano del amigo que le acompañaba y ahora está buscándole. Así van sucediendo capítulos narrados en orden cronológico por personajes distintos hasta el último, titulado: The writer (La escritora), uno de mis preferidos, en el que Han Kang se incluye como personaje y en el que cuenta cómo descubrió esta historia.
El estilo de Han Kang me ha parecido una mezcla a caballo entre lo lírico y poético y lo visceral y rudo. Un sello muy personal que habiendo leído tan solo una novela suya ya me ha resultado muy distintivo.
Una historia de fantasmas silenciados y perdidos de los que ni el lector puede escapar.
Ha pasado un mes desde que terminé este libro y aún no sé cómo hablar de él...
La novela está basada en hechos reales, situada en Corea del Sur en 1980, y centrada en el genocidio de Gwangju (manifestaciones a favor de la democracia que tuvieron una fortísima represión policial que acabó con miles de muertos y desaparecidos).
La historia está dividida en capítulos narrados por personajes distintos y en orden cronológico hasta el día de hoy, todos centrados en el impacto que siguen teniendo hoy en día aquellos sucesos .
El primer capítulo es el catalizador de la novela: Dong-ho es un estudiante de secundaria que en plena manifestación, aterrorizado, suelta la mano del amigo que le acompañaba y ahora está buscándole. Así van sucediendo capítulos narrados en orden cronológico por personajes distintos hasta el último, titulado: The writer (La escritora), uno de mis preferidos, en el que Han Kang se incluye como personaje y en el que cuenta cómo descubrió esta historia.
El estilo de Han Kang me ha parecido una mezcla a caballo entre lo lírico y poético y lo visceral y rudo. Un sello muy personal que habiendo leído tan solo una novela suya ya me ha resultado muy distintivo.
Una historia de fantasmas silenciados y perdidos de los que ni el lector puede escapar.
June 7, 2023
this book will haunt me until the end of times
March 10, 2023
4'25 / 5
1980, Gwangju, Corea del sur. Un levantamiento social, sobre todo por estudiantes de la universidad, termina en una masacre con miles de muertos -y torturados.
¿Cuál fue el motivo del levantamiento? Deseo de democracia.
El libro está dividido en 7 partes, cada una de ellas narradas por un personaje distinto. Narradas en primera, segunda y tercera persona, según el capítulo y/o del párrafo.
Tenemos la perspectiva de un adolescente, de una madre, de un muerto, de un prisionero, y más. Algunos nos cuentan su historia en la época del levantamiento, y otros años después.
En un principio puede parecer que los capítulos pueden ser incluso relatos, pero todos se van conectando en algún momento, por lo que hace que todo sea una misma historia.
Este es un libro crudo y durísimo. Aunque hay que decir que la autora no se recrea en describirnos escenas demasiado sangrientas; pero sí que hay muerte, tristeza, depresión, oscuridad, dolor, etc. en toda la novela.
Si bien los personajes son ficticios, nos cuenta la realidad de lo que ocurrió en Gwangju. Y es que el ejercito mató y torturó a hombres y mujeres, a niños y niñas (adolescentes, pero vamos, que con 15 años eres un niño todavía), y supongo que también ancianos y ancianas. En como todo eso deja huella en todos los que vivían allí, en toda la sociedad.
La prosa de la autora es atrapante, con un estilo particular y original.
El pero que le pongo es que me he liado con los nombres. No es culpa de la autora, pero me sacaba de la lectura a veces, porque no recordaba quien era; aunque al final más o menos los sitúas.
Vale muchísimo la pena leerlo, igual que 'La vegetariana', de la misma autora. Solo he leído estos dos de Kang, así que son los que os recomiendo. Quizás hay que poner un poco de esfuerzo, pero merecen el intento.
Dejo dos fragmentos del libro:
__Fragmento del capítulo del Prisionero:
"Algunos de los que vinieron a masacrarnos lo hicieron con el recuerdo de aquellos tiempos anteriores, cuando cometer tales acciones en tiempos de guerra les había ganado una hermosa recompensa. Sucedió en Gwangju tal como sucedió en la isla de Jeju, en Kwantung y Nanjing, en Bosnia y en todo el continente americano cuando todavía se conocía como el Nuevo Mundo, con una brutalidad tan uniforme que es como si estuviera impreso en nuestro código genético.
Nunca me permito olvidar que cada persona que conozco es miembro de esta raza humana. Y eso incluye a usted, profesor, escuchando este testimonio. Como me incluye a mí mismo.
Todos los días examino la cicatriz en mi mano. Este lugar donde una vez estuvo expuesto el hueso, donde una secreción lechosa se filtró de una herida supurante. Cada vez que me encuentro con un Biro Monami ordinario, el aliento se me atrapa en la garganta. Espero a que el tiempo me lave como agua fangosa. Espero a que llegue la muerte y me lave, para liberarme de la memoria de esas otras muertes miserables, que persiguen mis días y noches.
Estoy luchando, solo, todos los días. Lucho con el infierno que sobreviví. Lucho con el hecho de mi propia humanidad. Lucho con la idea de que la muerte es la única manera de escapar de este hecho.
Así que dime, profesor, ¿qué respuestas tienes para mí? Tú, un ser humano como yo."
__Fragmento del capítulo de la chica de la fábrica:
"Yoon te ha pedido que recuerdes. "Hacer frente a esos recuerdos", "dar testimonio de ellos".
Pero, ¿cómo puede ser posible algo así?
¿Es posible atestiguar el hecho de que una regla de madera de treinta centímetros sea introducida repetidamente en mi vagina, hasta la pared trasera de mi útero? ¿A la culata de un rifle golpeando mi cuello uterino?
¿Al hecho de que, cuando el sangrado no cesaba y yo había entrado en estado de shock, tenían que llevarme al hospital para una transfusión de sangre?
¿Es posible enfrentarme a que continuaré sangrando durante los próximos dos años, a que se forme un coágulo de sangre en mis trompas de Falopio y me deje permanentemente incapaz de tener hijos?
¿Es posible atestiguar que acabé con una aversión patológica al contacto físico, especialmente con los hombres?"
1980, Gwangju, Corea del sur. Un levantamiento social, sobre todo por estudiantes de la universidad, termina en una masacre con miles de muertos -y torturados.
¿Cuál fue el motivo del levantamiento? Deseo de democracia.
El libro está dividido en 7 partes, cada una de ellas narradas por un personaje distinto. Narradas en primera, segunda y tercera persona, según el capítulo y/o del párrafo.
Tenemos la perspectiva de un adolescente, de una madre, de un muerto, de un prisionero, y más. Algunos nos cuentan su historia en la época del levantamiento, y otros años después.
En un principio puede parecer que los capítulos pueden ser incluso relatos, pero todos se van conectando en algún momento, por lo que hace que todo sea una misma historia.
Este es un libro crudo y durísimo. Aunque hay que decir que la autora no se recrea en describirnos escenas demasiado sangrientas; pero sí que hay muerte, tristeza, depresión, oscuridad, dolor, etc. en toda la novela.
Si bien los personajes son ficticios, nos cuenta la realidad de lo que ocurrió en Gwangju. Y es que el ejercito mató y torturó a hombres y mujeres, a niños y niñas (adolescentes, pero vamos, que con 15 años eres un niño todavía), y supongo que también ancianos y ancianas. En como todo eso deja huella en todos los que vivían allí, en toda la sociedad.
La prosa de la autora es atrapante, con un estilo particular y original.
El pero que le pongo es que me he liado con los nombres. No es culpa de la autora, pero me sacaba de la lectura a veces, porque no recordaba quien era; aunque al final más o menos los sitúas.
Vale muchísimo la pena leerlo, igual que 'La vegetariana', de la misma autora. Solo he leído estos dos de Kang, así que son los que os recomiendo. Quizás hay que poner un poco de esfuerzo, pero merecen el intento.
Dejo dos fragmentos del libro:
__Fragmento del capítulo del Prisionero:
"Algunos de los que vinieron a masacrarnos lo hicieron con el recuerdo de aquellos tiempos anteriores, cuando cometer tales acciones en tiempos de guerra les había ganado una hermosa recompensa. Sucedió en Gwangju tal como sucedió en la isla de Jeju, en Kwantung y Nanjing, en Bosnia y en todo el continente americano cuando todavía se conocía como el Nuevo Mundo, con una brutalidad tan uniforme que es como si estuviera impreso en nuestro código genético.
Nunca me permito olvidar que cada persona que conozco es miembro de esta raza humana. Y eso incluye a usted, profesor, escuchando este testimonio. Como me incluye a mí mismo.
Todos los días examino la cicatriz en mi mano. Este lugar donde una vez estuvo expuesto el hueso, donde una secreción lechosa se filtró de una herida supurante. Cada vez que me encuentro con un Biro Monami ordinario, el aliento se me atrapa en la garganta. Espero a que el tiempo me lave como agua fangosa. Espero a que llegue la muerte y me lave, para liberarme de la memoria de esas otras muertes miserables, que persiguen mis días y noches.
Estoy luchando, solo, todos los días. Lucho con el infierno que sobreviví. Lucho con el hecho de mi propia humanidad. Lucho con la idea de que la muerte es la única manera de escapar de este hecho.
Así que dime, profesor, ¿qué respuestas tienes para mí? Tú, un ser humano como yo."
__Fragmento del capítulo de la chica de la fábrica:
"Yoon te ha pedido que recuerdes. "Hacer frente a esos recuerdos", "dar testimonio de ellos".
Pero, ¿cómo puede ser posible algo así?
¿Es posible atestiguar el hecho de que una regla de madera de treinta centímetros sea introducida repetidamente en mi vagina, hasta la pared trasera de mi útero? ¿A la culata de un rifle golpeando mi cuello uterino?
¿Al hecho de que, cuando el sangrado no cesaba y yo había entrado en estado de shock, tenían que llevarme al hospital para una transfusión de sangre?
¿Es posible enfrentarme a que continuaré sangrando durante los próximos dos años, a que se forme un coágulo de sangre en mis trompas de Falopio y me deje permanentemente incapaz de tener hijos?
¿Es posible atestiguar que acabé con una aversión patológica al contacto físico, especialmente con los hombres?"
May 16, 2016
Human Acts – 5 stars
A literary masterpiece about humanity
This author continues to astonish me. Her first book, “The Vegetarian”, is a totally unique work of fiction. This book, “Human Acts”, is a fictionalized account of an actual student uprising in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980. Hundreds of people (estimates run from 600 to 2,000), most of them young students, were killed during this protest. This book focuses on the death of one 15-year-old boy, Dong-ho.
Ms. Kang has a wonderful talent for bringing her characters to life. She will follow a trickle of sweat down a woman’s neck until you can actually feel it yourself. So her re-telling of the brutality inflicted on these innocent people makes it a very hard subject matter to read. These people become a part of your life so there’s no turning away when terrible things happen to them. I found it to be a very emotional book. This is not a book for the faint hearted. There are horrendous torture scenes depicted. But as always when human acts are at their worst, there are also acts of courage and solidarity and love and hope.
The book is written in interconnected chapters covering the period right before the uprising began in 1980 through 2013. They include the stories of a young boy searching for his presumed-dead friend, a mother facing denial, an editor dealing with censorship, a prisoner trying to find a reason to continue living and a victim struggling with nightmares so many years later. There is even a chapter about a young victim whose consciousness is still connected to his dead body who tries to puzzle out why he was killed. The last chapter is about the author’s own personal connection with Gwnagju. There is a scene in this book about a censored play that was so moving and powerful that I will never forget it. Often the characters tell their stories to “You” who is unnamed. The unnamed “You” is sometimes meant to be you, the reader, other times it’s you, the dead and yet other times it’s you, the people as they were before the massacre.
Ms. Kang has written a fitting tribute to the victims of the Gwangju uprising. Quite a literary masterpiece. Highly recommended.
I won a copy of this book in a LibraryThings giveaway.
A literary masterpiece about humanity
This author continues to astonish me. Her first book, “The Vegetarian”, is a totally unique work of fiction. This book, “Human Acts”, is a fictionalized account of an actual student uprising in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980. Hundreds of people (estimates run from 600 to 2,000), most of them young students, were killed during this protest. This book focuses on the death of one 15-year-old boy, Dong-ho.
Ms. Kang has a wonderful talent for bringing her characters to life. She will follow a trickle of sweat down a woman’s neck until you can actually feel it yourself. So her re-telling of the brutality inflicted on these innocent people makes it a very hard subject matter to read. These people become a part of your life so there’s no turning away when terrible things happen to them. I found it to be a very emotional book. This is not a book for the faint hearted. There are horrendous torture scenes depicted. But as always when human acts are at their worst, there are also acts of courage and solidarity and love and hope.
The book is written in interconnected chapters covering the period right before the uprising began in 1980 through 2013. They include the stories of a young boy searching for his presumed-dead friend, a mother facing denial, an editor dealing with censorship, a prisoner trying to find a reason to continue living and a victim struggling with nightmares so many years later. There is even a chapter about a young victim whose consciousness is still connected to his dead body who tries to puzzle out why he was killed. The last chapter is about the author’s own personal connection with Gwnagju. There is a scene in this book about a censored play that was so moving and powerful that I will never forget it. Often the characters tell their stories to “You” who is unnamed. The unnamed “You” is sometimes meant to be you, the reader, other times it’s you, the dead and yet other times it’s you, the people as they were before the massacre.
Ms. Kang has written a fitting tribute to the victims of the Gwangju uprising. Quite a literary masterpiece. Highly recommended.
I won a copy of this book in a LibraryThings giveaway.
February 2, 2023
Everything about this book was so sad and poetic. Rating it 5 stars does not do it justice.
August 17, 2021
گذار از اقتدارگرایی و رسیدن به مردم سالاری، راه خیلی دشواریه و بدون مبارزه و فداکاری و جانبازی بدست نمیاد و چه کسی بهتر از ما میتونه این موضوع رو درک کنه؟ داستان کتاب اعمال انسانی برای ما ایرانی ها خیلی ملموسه. کتاب درباره خیزش مردم شهر گوانگجو در سال ۱۹۸۰ علیه حکومت نظامی و دیکتاتوری کره جنوبی به ریاست چون دو هوانه. اعتراضی که ابتدا توسط دانشجو ها و به طور مسالمت آمیز برگزار میشه اما با دخالت پلیس به خشونت کشیده میشه، چند دانشجو کشته میشن، مردم اسلحه به دست میگیرن، درگیری ها در گوانگجو شدت میگیره و در طی کمتر از ده روز ششصد نفر زن، مرد و کودک کشته میشن. دولت با بستن ورودی های شهر و بازداشت خبرنگارها، تمام اخبار اعتراضات رو مخفی میکنه. در آخر، رییس جمهور هم معترضین رو مزدور و آشوبگر و جاسوس کمونیست ها خوند. آشنائه نه؟
داستان کتاب شش فصل داره و ��ر فصل از دید یه نفره و هم وقایع در حین اعتراضات رو پوشش میده هم زندانی شدن و شکنجه معترضین بعد از سرکوب اعتراض ها و هم داستان زندگی معترضین بعد از آزاد شدنشون از زندان و تلاش ناموفقشون برای برگشتن به زندگی عادی.
کتاب به شدت تلخه و از توصیف جزییات شکنجه و رنج معترضین دریغ نمیکنه. پیشنهاد میکنم اصلا با حال روحی خراب سراغش نرین حالتون رو خیلی بدتر میکنه.
داستان کتاب شش فصل داره و ��ر فصل از دید یه نفره و هم وقایع در حین اعتراضات رو پوشش میده هم زندانی شدن و شکنجه معترضین بعد از سرکوب اعتراض ها و هم داستان زندگی معترضین بعد از آزاد شدنشون از زندان و تلاش ناموفقشون برای برگشتن به زندگی عادی.
کتاب به شدت تلخه و از توصیف جزییات شکنجه و رنج معترضین دریغ نمیکنه. پیشنهاد میکنم اصلا با حال روحی خراب سراغش نرین حالتون رو خیلی بدتر میکنه.
February 6, 2017
I will read anything Han Kang writes. Her stories are haunting and powerful beyond belief. Human Acts is the story of a violently suppressed student uprising in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980. It is based on actual event which I knew nothing about. Like The Vegetarian, this not an easy story to read and it is haunting in its brutality but it is important and should definitely be read.
April 9, 2023
Review Atos Humanos, de Han Kang
77/2020
Trata-se de uma ficcionalização baseada em documentos e entrevistas a alguns dos envolvidos/ vítimas/ famílias das vítimas que fizeram parte da revolta estudantil de 1980 em Gwangju, na Coreia do Sul, que terminou com um massacre absolutamente injustificado, gratuito, de estudantes do secundário e universitários, sem precedentes.
“Desde que a revolta começou, eu sentia uma coisa qualquer a correr-me nas veias, uma coisa tão avassaladora como qualquer exército.
Consciência.
Consciência, a coisa mais assustadora que existe no mundo.”
Revi muita da intenção de Han Kang, neste livro, nas intenções de Svetlana Alexievich com as suas Vozes da Utopia, e não posso deixar de relevar o quão importante é termos livros que nos contem as atrocidades a que o mundo já se sujeitou (nos dias de hoje mais que nunca) para que possamos não voltar a cometer os mesmos erros.
Han Kang trucidou-me com este livro, e honrou aqueles que foram sujeitos a uma violência inenarrável como deve ser feito. Sem floreados. Sem adjectivos. De forma nua e crua.
Porque se tratam de momentos da História “que, ao ser relembrada, traz consigo massacre, tortura, repressão violenta.(...) Mas se o mundo mantiver os olhos abertos, e conseguirmos todos ficar de olhos bem abertos até ao fim, por mais amargo que seja...”, talvez não voltemos a cometer os mesmo actos. Por favor, mantenham os olhos bem abertos até ao fim.
E leiam este livro. Já leram?
77/2020
Trata-se de uma ficcionalização baseada em documentos e entrevistas a alguns dos envolvidos/ vítimas/ famílias das vítimas que fizeram parte da revolta estudantil de 1980 em Gwangju, na Coreia do Sul, que terminou com um massacre absolutamente injustificado, gratuito, de estudantes do secundário e universitários, sem precedentes.
“Desde que a revolta começou, eu sentia uma coisa qualquer a correr-me nas veias, uma coisa tão avassaladora como qualquer exército.
Consciência.
Consciência, a coisa mais assustadora que existe no mundo.”
Revi muita da intenção de Han Kang, neste livro, nas intenções de Svetlana Alexievich com as suas Vozes da Utopia, e não posso deixar de relevar o quão importante é termos livros que nos contem as atrocidades a que o mundo já se sujeitou (nos dias de hoje mais que nunca) para que possamos não voltar a cometer os mesmos erros.
Han Kang trucidou-me com este livro, e honrou aqueles que foram sujeitos a uma violência inenarrável como deve ser feito. Sem floreados. Sem adjectivos. De forma nua e crua.
Porque se tratam de momentos da História “que, ao ser relembrada, traz consigo massacre, tortura, repressão violenta.(...) Mas se o mundo mantiver os olhos abertos, e conseguirmos todos ficar de olhos bem abertos até ao fim, por mais amargo que seja...”, talvez não voltemos a cometer os mesmo actos. Por favor, mantenham os olhos bem abertos até ao fim.
E leiam este livro. Já leram?
May 28, 2018
“I still remember the moment when my gaze fell upon the mutilated face of a young woman, her features slashed through with a bayonet. Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't realised was there.”
A semi-fictional account of unnecessarily violent supression of a student uprising in Han Kang's home town, Gwangju, South Korea in 1980 through point of view of inter-related characters. I guess it would have been brutal to expect another 'The Vegetarian' from her but this is beautiful in its own way - showing what it means having to live through such incidences - how it changes the way one sees the world:
“Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?”
what it means to lose someone dear to illogical brutalities of psychopaths that seem to be getting hold of power everywhere - that is, to lose them so entirely both body and soul taken away from you (there must be something soothing for a grieving person in the acts of last rites, something that helps them to come to terms with their loss - and several mothers were deprived of that 'something'):
“After you died I could not hold a funeral,
And so my life became a funeral.”
“After you were lost to us, all our hours declined into evening.
Evening are our streets and our houses.
In this half-light that no longer darkens nor lightens, we eat, and walk, and sleep.”
and how survival in such cases is just a relative term - how you come out of such things different, broken irreparably (remember Headth Ledger's 'Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stranger.")
“I'm fighting alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.”
“Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.”
*****
“Glass is transparent, right? And fragile. That's the fundamental nature of glass. And that's why objects that are made of glass have to be handled with care. After all, if they end up smashed or cracked or chipped, then they're good for nothing, right, you just have to chuck them away.
Before, we used to have a kind of glass that couldn't be broken. A truth so hard and clear it might as well have been made of glass. So when you think about it, it was only when we were shattered that we proved we had souls. That what we really were was humans made of glass.”
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