Greek Lessons

Han Kang · b. 1970 · South Korea

Originally Huirabeo Sigan (Korean) · translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won

Why it matters

A woman who has lost the power of speech and a teacher slowly losing his sight meet over a classroom of ancient Greek grammar, groping toward each other past language's collapse. Han Kang's quietest novel: loss rendered in the body's own vocabulary.

At a glance

Alternating close interior perspectives and dense, poetic prose with little conventional plot.