Yes, these were the moments that make me fall in love with her writing, because there is an enlightening touch to her words that throw me off guard, then as I rebound, stretches me to look at things from different, creative perspectives. Yet, despite how clinical and ascetic her style was, there are moments where Kang’s prose is elevated by an elegiac, lyrical even, use of language. For him, it’s the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence. The Greek professor's parts are in first and second person, recounting time in Germany, addressing an old friend/lover.

Greek Lessons, by Han Kang, reviewed The language of love: Greek Lessons, by Han Kang, reviewed

I liked The Vegetarian when I read it years ago, so when I saw Han Kang’s latest offering, I snatched it up. For Han, writing is something of a pure impulse – one that exists separate to awards and audiences whom, she says, she never thinks of when working, anyway.Though the two books have shared concerns, the sensual, botanical and earthbound register of The Vegetarian contrasts with Greek Lessons as summer does winter: the latter is a crystalline, cerebral work of an icier temperature. We can be touched or relieved to see Han grant these two protagonists the moment of communion that is denied so many of her other characters. When the woman’s therapist, with whom she converses in writing, suggests that this episode of muteness might have been directly provoked by the “clear causes” of her mother’s death and having her child taken away, the woman responds, “It isn’t as simple as that. The man retracing his past, his mind given over to memories of his childhood in Germany where his family relocated when he was still very young; the woman attempting to exhaust herself, to cut herself off from memories she’d rather not confront. This puts him in a perpetual state of departure, taking in everything he can see as though for the last time, in the kind of long goodbye to the world that might belong to all of us in the 21st century, or to everyone preoccupied with a sense of their own mortality.

Greek Lessons - Wikipedia Greek Lessons - Wikipedia

Han wrote The Vegetarian, and its sister-work, Mongolian Mark by hand, as overuse of the computer keyboard had damaged her wrist. It's a quick read, an intelligent and, at times, moving one but quite abstract and bloodless - it didn't wow me or trouble me the way The Vegetarian did. Note: I have since found there is an English translation published 2023, and though I would suggest retaining a careful distance with the translated text, as I am rather dubious of Deborah Smith's translation and have found other sources that further strengthen my doubt (see Translations In Korea: Theory And Practice) it comes as a welcome relief, for the parts I found most lovely of this book were about language, the love for learning, the hidden analogies and patterns in language, which many readers may empathize with.Overall, impressive and although not my favourite by the author, still a strong contender for the International Booker. She was born in Kwangju and at the age of 10, moved to Suyuri (which she speaks of affectionately in her work "Greek Lessons") in Seoul. Though the woman enrolls in the man’s ancient-Greek class in an attempt to willfully re-estrange herself from her tongue and thus recover it, much in the same way that learning French reopened that channel in her mind, she begins to suspect that this silence is unyielding and possibly final. If this makes Greek Lessons sound a little like a morality tale, it is more accurately pictured – as references to Plato and Socrates suggest – as a philosophical examination of selfhood and contingency.