RaveThe Observer (UK)A daring, uncompromising, bonkers serious-scape of the kind that rarely gets the limelight in the UK’s contemporary literary field. Why? Because it’s subversive, off the wall and, frankly, challenging to the status quo of what literature is and does. For all these reasons, I’m glad of it ... Isn’t just another bright, shiny, unorthodox thing for the sake of bright, shiny unorthodoxy, not least because it engages with themes that matter – inequality, injustice, social and cultural deprivation – and it does it with a wit that’s acerbic and playful at the same time ... This is a radical, rebellious novel and it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. There were moments when I tired of the flamboyant hypercrazy – even if that was the point – but at the same time, I loved being taken out of my readerly comfort zone.
Han Kang, trans. by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won
RaveThe Guardian (UK)An extraordinary and dense novel that offers up new depths on each reading. It is short – 160 pages – which means you can read and reread it in a day if you want to. I have a soft spot for short novels – their intensity, their skill in delivering something sharp and true in a few breaths – but the bias is irrelevant because it does what all good novels do: it invites the reader into a world that reaches well beyond the confines of its pages ... The original was published in Korean in 2011 and it’s a happy coincidence that what’s inevitably lost in translation – something always is – seems to underline the dissolution and transience of language (and lives) that Kang is exploring. In many ways, the language is poetic – metaphor is second nature to her; she manages to excavate ideas with very few words – and it’s not surprising to learn that Kang started out her publishing life as a poet ... Thank goodness Han Kang’s literary voice takes up space in the world in the way her female characters struggle to.
