Human Acts

Publisher: Granta Publications
Imprint: Granta Books
Pub date: 03 Nov 2016
Edition: Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2024
Number of pages: 224
Weight: 170g
Height: 197mm
Width: 130mm
Spine width: 18mm

A riveting, poetic and powerful work from the author of the International Booker Prize-winning novel The Vegetarian. 'Exquisite, painful and deeply courageous' Philippe Sands, Best Books of the Year, Guardian Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. Amid a violent student uprising a young boy named Dong-ho is killed. As his friend searches for Dong-ho's corpse, we also meet an editor struggling against censorship, a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories, and Dong-ho's grief-stricken mother. Through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope comes a tale of a brutalised people in search of a voice. A modern classic, Human Acts has been both a controversial bestseller and an award-winning book in Korea, and it confirmed Han Kang as a writer of international importance. '[Han Kang's] way of telling about the events of a 10-day insurgency in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980 and its psychological, spiritual and political aftermath opened my eyes' Susie Orbach, Best Books of the Year, Guardian