Böcker av Han Kang

A powerful novel of the saving grace of language and human connection, from the celebrated author of The Vegetarian.'Breathtaking . . . She is simply my favourite living writer to read, and think with, and see the world with' Max Porter__________________In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.Soon they discover a deeper pain binds them. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it's the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages.Greek Lessons is a tender love letter to human connection, a novel to awaken the senses, vividly conjuring the essence of what it means to be alive.Translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won.__________________'Another stunning gem: quiet, sharply faceted, and devastating' Kirkus'Han Kang's vivid and at times violent storytelling will wake up even the most jaded of literary palates' Independent'Han Kang is a writer like no other. In a few lines, she seems to traverse the entirety of human experience' Katie Kitamura

'Han Kang is one of the most powerfully gifted writers in the world' Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies Like a long winter's dream, this new novel by Han Kang takes us on a journey from contemporary South Korea into its painful historyOne morning in December, Kyungha receives a message from her friend Inseon saying she has been hospitalized in Seoul and asking that Kyungha join her urgently. The two women have last seen each other over a year before, on Jeju Island, where Inseon lives and where, two days before this reunion, she has injured herself chopping wood. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation, Inseon has had to leave behind her pet bird, which will quickly die unless it receives food. Bedridden, she begs Kyungha to take the first plane to Jeju to save the animal. Unfortunately, a snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon's house at all costs, but the icy wind and snow squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save Inseon's bird - or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness which awaits her at her friend's house. There, the long-buried story of Inseon's family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in the archive painstakingly assembled at the house, documenting a terrible massacre on the island of 30,000 civilians, murdered in 1948-9. Impossible Goodbyes is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination, and above all a powerful indictment against forgetting. These beautiful pages form much more than a novel - they illuminate a traumatic memory, buried for decades, that still resonates today.