Human Acts Paperback – November 3, 2016

The story is superbly narrated in a very different innovative way. Literary speaking it is beautiful. It is worth reading even just to indulge in the wonderful use of language and the devices of its prose, but it is so much more. It is a testimony, a lament, a warning and a chant filled with pain. It allows hope too, the victims are so human, so real, it becomes a testament to what it means to be human. Capable of the cruelest acts and capable of unending love, courage and inner strength. A must read.

This novel is heartbreaking, gut-wrenching eour de force. One of the greatest books I've ever read.

I really loved her style. However, the details of this horrific event made me hate reading it, and I couldn't wait to finish it. It truly is a masterpiece but not for the faint of heart or weak stomach.

By both interviews and research, Han Lang has written a beautiful novel about a massacre of students and workers in 1980 Gwangju South Korea by federal forces under a brutal military dictator. Focusing on the experience of one 15 year old schoolboy and others associated with the events of those days, she brings the reader an understanding of the terror and enduring pain caused by the government forces. Her epilogue at the end of the novel gives context to the history, and her family's relationship to the events. The writing is beautiful.

I understand why this novel would win a Nobel. The 1980 Gwangju Massacre was made vivid and real, and there is a universal theme of the after effects of trauma and torture that is so well presented. But I just want to point out a small quirk of the British translator—the repeated image of the MonAMI ballpoint pen. Deborah Smith calls the ballpoint pen a Biro. No one in Korea calls a ballpoint pen a biro. American English is the standard, and in fact a ballpoint pen is called a ballpen (in a Korean accent). Also a yogurt pot was consumed early on as a snack, but there was no yogurt in the entire country in 1980. The character consumed a liquid Yakult, the peachy colored beverage with the green foil lid in that quirky shaped plastic container. These details are petty, but the Britishisms make it one step more exotic/British/translated than it needs to be.

This book is easy to read in that I finished it in about three days (busy schedule) and Deborah Smith did a fine job in translating - with a bit of a British angle to it. This lends the book its international flavor as it is not a typical book from an American novelist.I was surprised by its simple and straight forward prose, which reminded me to Hemingway's books. I read four to five of this great American author and in no way comparing Ms. Kang to him; but, she does appear to write in not an overly high Academic style, one I guess expects of a Nobel prize author.HOWEVER, I underwent several different emotions from sadness*, anger (at the Government soldiers), despondency and finally some hope. You have to read all the way through and Ms. Kang ties it all very well at the last chapter. Great job by this author.Footnote*: Sadness in that the Gwangju Massacre occurred in 1980, which is too recent and within my lifetime.

In a student uprising in South Korea last century, the young boy Dong-Ho was killed. The book is written in interconnected chapters that speak of Dong-Ho and of people around him who lived and were somehow aware of or experienced the same episode. These people are his best friend, an editor who works and struggles against censorship, a prisoner, a worker, his mother, who together and independently raise their voices to let us know of the terrible things that happened then. The author is gifted with her excellent writing, and in this book she never shies away from or disguises what happened. Accordingly, it is a raw book that narrates in detail what human beings are capable of doing and the pain they are willing to inflict.

Dong-ho is only 15 years old when he's violently killed during the 1980 Gwangju Uprising in South Korea. In a series of interconnected stories, Han Kang tells the story of Dong-ho and the people around him whose lives were taken or forever changed.If you've read Anthony Marra's The Tsar of Love and Techno, you'll recognize Kang's approach: while each story is distinct, together they unravel a loosely connected narrative.There's such immense, unflinching brutality in these page. This is a book about oppression, torture, violence, cruelty, trauma and death, and Kang isn't in the business of sugarcoating any of it. It's upsetting to confront the reality that this is all part of humanity—and has been all along. Kang reminds us that we're all bodies and those bodies can be destroyed in an instant, without a second thought.And yet there's also beauty in these pages. Because humanity is more than just its worst parts. And those bodies are more than just flesh and blood.Kang is an exceptional writer with prose that flow like poetry, and some of the stories in Human Acts are deeply affecting. That said, this book presumes a knowledge of recent South Korean history that I just don't have, so I think some it didn't resonate with me as much as it could have. This, of course, is not Kang's fault, however I rate books based in part on my subjective enjoyment of them so I feel compelled to reflect that in my rating.Some of the stories were 5-stars reads for me, others more like 3 stars, so I'm rating this in between.