Human Acts

A Novel

By: Han Kang

Narrated by: Sandra Oh, Deborah Smith - introduction, Greta Jung, Jae Jung, Jennifer Kim, Raymond J. Lee, Keong Smith

Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

From the internationally best-selling author of The Vegetarian, a "rare and astonishing" (The Observer) portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice.

In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.

The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho's best friend who meets his own fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

An award-winning, controversial best seller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of an historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.

Read by Sandra Oh, Greta Jung, Jae Jung, Jennifer Kim, Raymond J. Lee, and Keong Smith, with an introduction read by Deborah Smith.

©2017 Han Kang (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Stunning . . . Han Kang has an ambition as large as Milton’s struggle with God: She wants to reconcile the ways of humanity to itself.”—NPR

“Human Acts is unique in the intensity and scale of this brutality. . . . The novel details a bloody history that was deliberately forgotten and is only now being recovered.”—The Nation

“Exquisitely crafted.”—O: the Oprah Magazine

Tedious

the drones on endlessly about dead bodies by the end of the second chapter I was totally bored.

CONTEXT

This is a truly horrific novel about a South Korean uprising in 1980 but it lacks historical context.

For one unfamiliar with South Korean history, the intent of describing the consequence of government slaughter of innocents is subsumed by numberless atrocities of the past. Kang undoubtedly intends to recount an historical event with universal meaning but succeeds in only offering a cathartic exercise for a gifted writer.

Man's inhumanity to man is an historical fact. Novels about government atrocity are mentally numbing without historical context.

The reality of today's North Korea is more mindfully present than Kang's un-contextualized story of South Korea. "Human Acts" is a disappointing novel.

What a horrible book

Among the worst I’ve ever found. Unless you want disgusting decaying body descriptions I’d pass

Story with potential, Monotone female narration

If I read it, I think I may have appreciated the cadenced descriptions more, but the monotone female narration made the book extremely difficult to listen to. It's unfortunate that better female readers didn't take on this book.

As for the actual story, I sense that in translation, much of the cultural aspects of the story was lost, esp regarding certain expressions that came off cliche in English. Still, it became clear that too much emphasis was placed on the corporeal descriptions rather than on the relational and character build up. It would also have been helpful to spend a bit more time earlier on setting the stage for the military clash.

Boring description, no plot

The book goes on and on describing dead bodies and there is hardly any plot. I also hate the second person narration.