Somehow, this book outsold “The Vegetarian” for me - if that is even possible. It is so full of yearning and sorrow and unlikely connection and unspeakable feelings. I found it to be more accessible than Kang’s other works, but it still pushed the boundaries of my mind and make me work to understand. Such gorgeously written prose in a structure that feels entirely singular to Kang. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much time studying semiotics & language, but this story hit me full force and will likely live at the bottom of my stomach, full of all it’s yearning & imagery, for weeks to come.

I love anything that Han Kang writes. This book did not disappoint me. The fragility of the protagonists is painfully apparent, but their words sting like shards of ice to the mind. Kang has written this novel in such a way that it is impossible to keep yourself from relating to their lives. Her characters are open, vulnerable, but fiercely determined. This is a beautifully written novel by an author that gets better with every book.

The Vegetarian by Han King is one of my all-time favorite novels, as described in my review from few years back (see link below). And thus, I was eager to read Greek Lessons. To the credit of King, this book is very different than The Vegetarian, but in its own way, equally compelling, thus demonstrating unequivocally an extraordinary talent.

The story focuses on two people, both of whom in their unique ways are immersed in language — the manner in which sound and script join to create meaning, along with the beauty and limitations of language itself. One main character has lost her ability to speak (and to a degree, formulate thought), the other is losing his ability to see, including the written word. These characters intersect in a class on ancient Greek (a language no longer spoken, only written). One is the teacher and the other the student. The plot and accompanying tension are simple. Will these two become more than teacher and student, and if so, but he cannot see and she cannot speak, how will the basic function of human relationships — to communicate — occur?

The chapters alternate between the two voices; some chapters deploy letter fragments, others are one-sided conversations recalling pivotal life events, still others are subjective descriptions of current traumas. All are fascinating. Unlike The Vegetarian, this book has a slow start and requires genuine attentiveness from the reader. I had to re-read the opening chapters a few times to get my bearings. But this is not a flaw, rather, taken as a whole retrospectively, it’s hard to see how the opening could have been any different. The slow and deliberate pacing was necessary to arrive at the moving conclusion. King’s use of language and musings on the nature of language as a tool to both expand and limit humanity (the latter especially when its definitional role is unexamined) is mesmerizing and at times even breathtaking in its philosophical insightfulness, despite the fact that this is a translation.

I recommend Greek Lessons and will be thinking about it for some time. Thank you to the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Review of The Vegetarian: https://www.pumpjackpress.com/book-reviews/2017/6/7/the-vegetarian

PS: By chance, I was reading right after Greek Lessons a new collection of poetry + photos from Robin Coste Lewis. On page 96, she writes "The only language I have is Language." This sentiment makes me feel like Lewis and King would have much to "language" about.

A sightless man and a mute woman connect over shared trauma. ‘Greek Lessons’ - by the brilliant Han Kang - is a surprisingly uplifting novel about the unlikely friendship between two emotionally damaged people. This is not what I was expecting from the author of ‘The Vegetarian’ but a tour de force nonetheless.

This contains some sophisticated writing, some of which may have gone a little over my head. But it is well written and constructed. I may have to re-read.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

this was my first Kang but definitely not my last. Greek Lessons is a short, intelligent novel but it packs a beautiful punch. similar to last year’s Babel, this story focuses on language and I loved the way Kang included that element into this story.

“Sometimes I put the question to myself using the form of Greek logic you so detested: When we take as true the premise that if something is lost, something else is gained, given that I lost you, what have I gained? What will I now gain through the loss of the visible world?”

Han Kang is like no other author. They are able to weave together such unique individuals and plot beats into such few pages.

I really cannot lie, I was so so so excited to read this...and I kind of fell off the boat. I think when the novel begins to turn more into prose and taking large breaks in between reads makes for a bit of a disjointed experience.

Nevertheless, I have to read Human Acts and The White Book!

While I found the prose beautiful I didn’t love this book. The way Han wrote about language and communication kept me going through this book. The story itself didn’t particularly interest me. I don’t know if it was just the way it was translated as I read the English version, but it felt watered down and not I was expecting fresh from reading The Vegetarian.

This is the fourth book I’ve read by Han Kang….
I admire Kang’s writing, and the depth of her powerful thought processes.
The three other books, “The Vegetarian”, “The Human Acts”, and “The White Book”, were each five stars from me — and each for different reasons….

I’ve been thinking about this book for a couple of weeks — I re-read parts a second time. I can’t ever waiting this long to write a review though — ‘after’ having read the book…..
but for me — this book was the hardest for me to fully comprehend……
and…..
I’ve been struggling with medical and physical issues — so I couldn’t be sure if my own ‘warped’ thoughts were coming from my reading or my own meshugana thoughts.

But here goes my ‘take-away’ thoughts, feelings, and experience….[may be different for everyone]….
I reflected inward….(if I clearly missed the boat in comprehending this novel - I apologize to Han Kang)….
So….
Here goes ….(embarrassing as can be)…..
First….
I thought deeply about the title ….(perhaps symbolically—there are several meanings?)….well, my search for meaning threw me…
When I looked up the word Greek, I got:
…..”Greek is a term used by prostitutes to describe anal sex. Often examples contain alternate symbols for letters.
Okay, I thought - well the ‘symbols’ explain the letters (which readers will discover themselves in this novel) ….. but not so much ‘the anal sex’….. (fine, I can easy let that go)…..
But Kang used ‘her stories in ‘Greek Lessons’ to help us understand communicating with words.
The term “It all sounds Greek to me”, is fitting…..
but symbolically ‘GREEK LESSONS’ with the use of symbols, words, images, and mental representations of objects, stories, and events allows for mental/intellectual meditative understanding….
For example….the female protagonist is dealing/ struggling/ suffering with sensory loss. It seems as if her brain is adapting — but clearly there is loss.
I was thinking about how crazy complicated it is for people to fully understand each other - with language- with our voices -
But with non-commutation …. one is left to rely on facial expression, tone of the voice, touch, lip reading, and sign language ….
Our male protagonist, a Greek instructor, was dealing with vision loss…..age-related macular degeneration.

Don’t laugh (or do - what do I care)….I was wondering if I could join the characters—bond with them over bodily loss - and deeper emotional pain….
I have my voice and eyesight - but with a degenerative spine condition—I’m experiencing loss of normal structure and function….limitations….and chronic pain…..
What I found beautiful about “Greek Lesson”…..besides the prose being super-stupendously spectacular. …..
was that as long as we ‘are’ breathing - alive as we know it — we are blessed to find even one person - whom we can share our pain with - our darkness with ….our alternatives to what others presumed normal….and share a closeness connection deeply satisfying….quieting….calm….and serene …..
……unlocking the true value of another ….of a friendship….harmony and intimacy.

On my first reading I gave it 4 stars but the more time I spent re-reading parts — I’m clearly began to ‘feel’ the unique brilliance…I raise my rating to 5 stars.
(still had a little e.e. Cummings experience-déjà vu-re-reading ‘Greek Lessons’ a second time)

I’ll leave some excerpts…. (but remember- without reading the entire book - they are just tasters)….
‘Greek Lessons’ is a must ….if already a Han Kang fans.

“The only person who knew that her life with split violently in two was she herself”.

“It first happened in the winter when she just turned sixteen. The language that had pricked and confined her like clothing made from a thousand needles abruptly disappeared. Words still reached her ears, but now a thick, dense layer of air buffered the space between her cochleas and brain. Wrapped in thot foggy silence, the memories of the tongue and lips that have been used to pronounce, of the hand that had firmly gripped the pencil, grew remote. She no longer thought and language. She moved without language, and understood without language—as it had been before, she learned to speak, no, before she had obtained life, silence, absorbing the flow of time like balls of cotton, enveloped her body, both outside and in”.

“Why are you studying Greek?”
“Off her guard, she looks down at her left wrist. Beneath the dark purple hair band, which is damp with sweat, the old scar is also clammy. She will not remember. And, if she must remember, if it is absolutely unavoidable, she will not feel anything”.

“She knows that no single specific experience led to her loss of language”.

“Fatigue is like a heady intoxication, dulling her thoughts”.

Thank you Random House Publishing and Netgalley

The first word that comes to mind with this book is “more”. I just wanted more from the plot and the characters. We have two characters losing one of their senses, the Ancient Greek instructor is losing his eyesight and one of his students ‘loses’ her ability to speak. Knowing he was going to lose his eyesight from a degenerative disease and still fighting the inevitable is supposed to be like humans fighting death. I’m still not 100% sure how losing your voice connects to death.
Their stories don’t connect until almost the end of the book, both of their losses bringing them together, finding a bright spot in their suffering. I felt their voices were indistinct and they never transcended their metaphorical device. The beautiful writing in this book couldn’t surpass the blandness of the story.

I remember years ago when I was a PhD students in classics, a visiting professor probingly asked us all why we had chosen to learn these dead languages. Everyone in the room had compelling reasons—a desire to understand and curate a body of literature that still exerts a profound impact on modern discourse; a sense of ethical obligation to reckon with problematic rhetorics of imperialism and their colonial legacies; an interest in recovering and revivifying the subaltern voices of antiquity, women, slaves, queer people, that have been erased from the canon. But as I listened to all these high-minded ideals, I couldn't honestly recall why I chose to learn Latin and Greek. When I think back to my earlier undergraduate classes, I remember them as a motley of queers and Catholics, and I was in both camps. Some students were there because they wanted to understand the patrimony of the Catholic Church, to read the Bible in Greek and to listen to Latin Mass; others were there to read a literature that was so profoundly queer—Sappho, Plato, Anacreon, Catullus, a pantheon of early homoerotic poets and philosophers. But as Han Kang's novel subtly shows, there is a special, underlying character to the dead language class, a silent shyness, a patient, introspective love of language, a philology that obsesses over words and their meanings even when no one speaks them any longer or can be confident about what they mean any more. Every ancient Greek class is committed to the necromancy of close reading, trying to revitalize beauty while doggedly parsing the monstrous chain of verbal prefixes and suffixes, reduplications and ablauts. It is an art that appeals to soft-spoken introverts.

Ethereal and delicate, <i>Greek Lessons</i> is about an enigmatic and tender connection that forms between a young woman in Seoul, who has lost her language, and her ancient Greek teacher, who has become blind. They are a contrasting pair of lonely outsiders. All through her childhood, she had eagerly taught herself Hangul and voraciously read books in the library but then, at the age of sixteen and then later again, when she lost her custody battle for her child, she simply lost her language, suffering a baffling form of aphasia in which she no longer could think in language or process the sounds. She had become mute and no psychotherapy or special education could remedy her condition. Unexpectedly, it was a French lesson in her childhood that triggered her memories of phonemes and language. So when she suffers a relapse, she decides to learn ancient Greek, hoping that its plethora of grammatical forms will help reconnect her with language. Her teacher, on the other hand, is a Korean man who had moved to Germany in his adolescence, was diagnosed with a condition of degenerative blindness and had committed himself to ancient Greek, to find some redemptive consolation in Platonic philosophies of virtue and excellence and forms beyond the material world.

In its style and plot, <i>Greek Lessons</i> reminds me of Yasunari Kawabata's <i>Dandelions</i>, about a woman who suddenly loses the ability to recognize her fiancé and is locked in a psychiatric ward while her fiancé and mother stand outside talking in circles about beauty and calligraphy and madness, constantly re-examining their memories to understand her condition. In both novels, there is a contemplative attempt to understand how we perceive the world and pathologize those who see the world differently. In <i>Greek Lessons</i>, the mute protagonist rejects the advice of her therapist. His interpretations and rationalizations of her condition are banal. It's not trauma or stress or some childhood memory that causes her muteness; language itself is the root of her aporia. Words terrorize her; they "thrust their way into her sleep like skewers". Language is the most intimate form of touch, vibrations of air moving up from the body, past the lips and into the ears of the other. And language requires her to "disseminate her self". Language involves an intrusive form of presence that is inimical to her character. Like Kawabata, there is a skepticism of therapists' explanations and doctrinal convictions about the human mind. <i>Greek Lessons</i> is a gentle and often paradoxical meditation on the nature of language and pathology.

I liked this book a lot, although at times it became too dense. But reading it, I felt genuine moments of self-recognition and it was wonderful to read. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read!

Gorgeous prose, as expected from Han Kang and Deborah Smith. I've read all of Han Kang's novels translated to English and this one has much of the same style as Kang's other works. This isn't my new favorite novel by Han Kang (that would still be Human Acts) but I was nonetheless thrilled to have something new to read by a favorite author.

One of my favorite works from Han Kang so far. As always, her writing is so clear and crisp, packed full of details and images that one needs to reread to get the full extent of throughout. In terms of subject and topic for this novel, the incorporation of a multicultural background for characters, as well as the learning of Ancient Greek, adds an interesting layer that's compelling, but not too much. It's a short novel, but a quick read; I recommend anyone interested pick it up at least once.

Han Kang is truly one of a kind. Her books are stories as well as performances, a dance with the language itself. I've loved her previous works, and this one is no different. The translation was great, too.

The first novel I read by Han Kang — International Booker winner The Vegetarian — was pretty much my idea of perfection: weird and affecting, equally engaging my heart and mind, it drew me in and taught me something of what it is to be a woman in modern-day South Korea. But Kang is no one-trick pony, no two of her books are quite alike, and while each of the novels I have read by her since has been undeniably well-written, none of them has quite sparked that original magic for me again. Greek Lessons is something new yet again — poetic and philosophical, it twines the stories of a woman who has unexpectedly lost the ability to speak with that of a man who is slowly losing his sight — and for the most part, I found the plot kind of predictable and bland; the two voices confusing in their interchangeability. I’m not disappointed to have read this — Kang’s sentences are engagingly delightful, her intent deeply philosophical — and although I’m rounding down to three stars as a rating against her earlier work (according toi my own reading tastes), I am looking forward to reading whatever Kang comes out with next.