For one whole year, Han Kang found herself unable to write – a disturbing development for a prize-winning author with a novel on the go. “I couldn’t write or read fiction,” she says. “I couldn’t even watch things.” When the South Korean author tried, words evaded her; she turned to documentaries, books about science. In truth, Han’s clean, masterful prose and subsequent critical acclaim have always belied a life-long struggle with language. “It is an impossible medium. It’s always failing,” she sighs. “Starting out as a poet, I’ve always felt that – but particularly that year, I felt it more. This impossibility of language.”
The words returned, but the experience left a mark – traces of which are all over her elliptical, resonant novel Greek Lessons. Its protagonist, having suddenly, mysteriously lost her ability to speak, finds solace in the classroom with her ancient Greek teacher who is, in turn, losing his sight. Written in 2011, the book is only now being published in English, following the success of Han’s other translated works. Greek Lessons, though, operates on a quieter register than her previous books. Its pages contain nothing resembling the graphic self-harm and force-feeding of Han’s fable-like novel The Vegetarian, for which she received global recognition and the Man Booker International Prize in 2016. Nor do they share the bloody ferocity of Human Acts (2014), a story that unfurls in the long shadow of a historical massacre.
