Human Acts by Han Kang

Han Kang is a South Korean novelist born in 1970, who became the first South Korean writer and the first female Asian writer to win the Nobel prize in literature, 2024 for her works include The Vegetarian, The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons. Her fiction novel “The Vegetarian”, which became the first Korean language novel to win the International Booker International Prize in 2016 and she won many other national awards for her work.

In this video is about the book “Human Acts”, which is also by Han Kang is reviewed by a YouTube on channel bookish family in a show coffee over apples. This book is a historical fiction novel about the Gwangju Uprising in 1980. The revolution was a violent protest against the military dictatorship that was ruling South Korea at the time. The protest was violently suppressed by the military, and hundreds of people were killed in the progress.

“Human Acts” is a powerful and moving book that composed of seven chapters including the final epilogue, with each chapter tracing the passage of time from the incident in the 1980s to the present-day, the story of the Gwangju Uprising through the eyes of a few different characters.