Author(s): Han Kang

Novel | Translated fiction | Korea

A powerful novel of the saving grace of language and human connection, from the celebrated author of The Vegetarian,

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 together. 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 tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish - the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to one another. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity - their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to expression.
Greek Lessons is a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection, a novel to awaken the senses, vividly conjuring the essence of what it means to be alive.

PRAISE FOR THE VEGETARIAN: 'Sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colours and disturbing questions. Sentence by sentence, The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience' Guardian 'A startling new novel... It is written in cool, still, poetic but matter-of-fact short sentences, translated luminously by Deborah Smith, who is obviously a genius' Deborah Levy 'Enthralling... It has a surreal and spellbinding quality, especially in its passage on nature and the physical landscape, so beautiful and so magnificently impervious to the human suffering around it' Independent

Review: By turns love letter to and critique of language itself, Greek Lessons is a brief yet, in its concision and finesse, lapidary work . . . one of Han's most intimate works * Financial Times *
In Greek Lessons Kang reaches beyond the usual senses to translate the unspeakable . . . Han Kang turns the well-worn idea of the mind-body disconnect into something fresh and substantial * Los Angeles Times *
This novel is a celebration of the ineffable trust to be found in sharing language . . . [Han] is an astute chronicler of unusual, insubordinate women * The New York Times *
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's vivid and at times violent storytelling will wake up even the most jaded of literary palates * Independent *
An elliptical, enigmatic book . . . Han's style creates mystery * The Economist *
Han Kang's hypnotic Greek Lessons probes the limits of language * The Straits Times *
Han Kang is what most writers spend their lives trying to be: a fearless, unsentimental teller of human truths . . . Han Kang is a genius -- Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies
Another stunning gem: quiet, sharply faceted, and devastating * Kirkus *

Author Biography: Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. In 1993 she made her literary debut as a poet and was first published as novelist in 1994. Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian and was shortlisted for The White Book, alongside her translator, Deborah Smith. Han has also won the Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today's Young Artist Award and the Manhae Literary Prize. She taught in the department of creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts for eleven years before leaving in 2018 to focus on writing.