Greek Lessons

Greek Lessons is Han Kang’s latest novel to be translated into English by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won. Han Kang is best known for The Vegetarian, the version of which translated by Deborah Smith won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016. Greek Lessons follows The Vegetarian with a similarly eerie tone and deliciously unexpected use of language, however, Han’s latest work stretches language to its limits to explore the beauty and terror in meaning-making and engagement with the world.

A gloomy yet simultaneously brilliant novel, Greek Lessons interweaves two perspectives, one of a woman who has lost her ability to speak, and of her teacher who is slowly losing his sight. Through these entwining narratives, Han explores what it means to make meaning through language, and what it means to lose language. Greek Lessons spirals out from the intricate grammatical structures of ancient Greek, in particular ‘the middle voice’, which allows within a single word for a subject to be both acting and acted upon. As is often the case with novels housing two perspectives, in the beginning I found one voice more compelling than the other. But over the course of the novel both voices grew more and more enjoyable, especially as they began to complement each other, bringing a different perspective to the other’s without fully touching.

I found this novel its most fascinating when it touched on translation, not only between languages, but of how language translates the senses. It shone for me when it reached for beauty in philosophy and found that just the act of thinking was beautiful: ‘Simply because that wondering was sensually beautiful and touched the electrode inside me that feels beauty.’

Greek Lessons is philosophical, complex and stunningly beautiful. Han Kang is an utterly adroit writer. I hope anyone remotely interested in language or beauty picks up this novel.