This Nobel Prize-Winning Choice Is A Difficult But Essential Read
Our book club pick for Februrary comes from the 2024 Nobel Prize For Literature winner Han Kang, and her book Human Acts. Translated by Deborah Smith in 2016, it is split into seven parts and centred around the 1980 Gwangju uprising in South Korea, which left between 1000-2000 protesters dead.
It is a tragic but essential read from one of the modern greats, asking difficult questions about how a country processes such unimaginable acts of violence, and drawing in themes of censorship, forgiveness, trauma and the importance of art.
What is it about?
The centre of the novel is the Gwangju Uprising in 1980 when a group of student-led civilians took to the streets in protest against the extension of martial law by army general Chun Doo-hwan. In one of the most infamous acts of violence in Korea’s history, paratroopers open fire upon the crowd, killing an estimated 1000-2000 people.
The novel centres around one of the most infamous acts of violence in South Korean history
Kang explores this moment in time in a way that reflects the scattered national reaction to the act – the novel is fragmented, split into seven parts each detailing the trauma and fallout echoing through multiple characters; It starts with a boy, Dong-Ho, in the immediate aftermath of the uprising searching through the dead and the injured to locate his friend. From there, we are in the presence of an editor at a publishing company struggling to coalesce her memories of the event and the censored version she is editing five years later and Dong-Ho’s mother, reflecting on her grief 30 years later, to a personal, meta-fictional section from the author Kang’s perspective in the present.
In an interview with The Guardian, Kang said that the novel aimed to explore “two insoluble riddles: how can humans be so violent and cruel, and what can people do to counter such extreme violence?”. Each narrator in the novel has lost trust on both an individual and societal level, whether they were directly or indirectly impacted by the massacre – the third narrator questions “How is it that a face can so effectively conceal what lies behind it? How is it not indelibly marked by such callousness, brutality, murderousness”. The question of the novel Kang seems to be interested in is to what extent can art restore this faith, and make what is incomprehensible able to be understood.
Why Should You Read It?
Describing a novel as “essential” has been overused to the point of parody, fodder for hardback sleeves and front-cover quotes. But this book does fall under that category. A crucial reason why is how Kang refuses to think about the massacre as an isolated act – she is constantly drawing parallels between the event at Gwangju and other acts of unfathomable violence throughout history. I was not aware of this tragedy before reading the book, but sadly it is not an unfamiliar story, and it remains profound and timeless when trying to make sense of contemporary horror. At one point, the fourth narrator thinks “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 uniform brutality it’s as though it is imprinted in our genetic code”.
The violence in the novel doesn’t come purely from an evil archetypal figure, but from ordinary humans, fellow citizens to the ones they enact violence against. That is even reflected in the title; Human Acts, not sensationalized, almost mundane and under it falls both the acts of violence depicted in the novel, as well as acts of kindness.
The violence in the novel doesn’t come purely from an evil archetypal figure, but from ordinary humans, fellow citizens to the ones they enact violence against
The writing style also makes what is such a bleak subject matter approachable. The Korean publishing industry is different to that in the UK or US – usually you publish a few short story collections first, honing your craft before moving on to the longer form novel. The structure reflects this; each chapter tells its own, isolated story, but there are echoes and overlaps throughout. Kang switches perspective depending on how she wants the reader to understand each chapter. Second-person is utilised when we are with a character struggling to process what they are experiencing; whether that’s the opening chapter set in the immediate aftermath, or through the eyes of a man imprisoned after the uprising struggling with PTSD. Third-person is deployed when following a character trying to unpack the events so they can be depicted – culminating in Kang inserting herself in the final section.
Verdict
It is a specific story about a shocking moment in Korean history, but is shockingly universal. If you saw the 2023 film The Zone of Interest, which follows the family of a Nazi officer attempting to build a warped, idyllic domestic life in a home that shares a wall with the outer border of Auschwitz, you’ll be familiar with the bleak feeling of how mundane horror can be.
There is hope present, however, mainly in how Kang centres the importance of art in depiction. One of the most troubling aspects of the Gwangju uprising was the censorship from the government, which had a tight grip on the media industry. Korean journalists were denied access, and the scale of the tragedy remained undisclosed to citizens. Official military records had the death toll at around 200; it was only through the effort of foreign journalists the more horrifying accurate number came to light. Art, Kang ultimately suggests, and books like Human Acts can give a voice to those that were silenced.
Read and watch these next
Chances are, after Human Acts you might need to pivot to something lighter. But after some time you’ll be drawn back into diving into another from Kang, and The Vegetarian, arguably her most famous creation and the first Korean-language novel to win the Booker Prize, is a great next step.
As mentioned, The Zone of Interest draws stark historical parallels with Human Acts. The way evil is depicted as lying so close to normality is eye-opening and frightening, but it is art at its most necessary.
Toni Morrison’s opus tackles similar themes in how we cope with trauma, when memory is fragmented and how crucial art is in depicting and remembering national horror too traumatic to process otherwise
Our March pick…
Intermezzo
Sally Rooney
The 21st Century’s buzziest and most-discussed author released her most polarising work last year, following two estranged brothers in Dublin brought together after the death of their father. Rooney adopted a more experimental style that alienated some readers but energized others. After three books that covered familiar ground, we’ll see if a change in approach paid off.
