Human Acts
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First published in South Korea in 2014, Human Acts is a powerful and deeply affecting novel centred on the Gwangju Uprising of May 1980, when the South Korean military violently suppressed a pro-democracy movement, killing hundreds of civilians. The story begins with fifteen-year-old Dong-ho, who searches for his murdered friend among the bodies gathered in a makeshift mortuary. From this devastating opening, Han Kang follows a series of interconnected lives across the decades: survivors, bereaved families, former prisoners and those who struggle to bear witness to what happened. Each voice reveals another fragment of a collective tragedy, tracing the enduring consequences of violence long after the streets have fallen silent.
Written with extraordinary precision and lyrical restraint, Human Acts explores political oppression, memory, grief, human dignity and the moral responsibility of remembering. Drawing on the history of her own hometown, Han Kang gives intimate form to an event that shaped modern South Korea, refusing to allow its victims to disappear into statistics or official silence. Both a work of historical witness and an act of profound literary compassion, the novel stands among the most important contemporary accounts of collective trauma, confirming Han Kang's place as one of the essential voices of world literature.
From the book
“What is humanity? What do we have to do to keep humanity as one thing and not another?”
— Han Kang, Human Acts
On Human Acts
“A rare and astonishing book, sensitively translated by Deborah Smith.”
— Claire Kohda Hazelton, The Guardian