Greek Lessons

A man is losing his sight. He is also losing his language: the ancient Greek he has devoted his life to teaching is dissolving, word by word, into silence. A woman comes to his class who cannot speak — she lost her Korean first and then her French, and is trying to build a life inside language by finding a new one. Between a man losing his words and a woman trying to find them, something begins that neither of them has words for.

Han Kang — winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature — writes in Greek Lessons about language itself: about the way it both constitutes and fails us, about the particular vulnerability of a person stripped of the words that have defined their inner life, and about the possibility of connection that exists below the level of speech. The prose is as spare and as precise as poetry, and the effect is quietly devastating.

For readers who loved The Vegetarian and Human Acts — and for anyone who has ever experienced the simultaneous inadequacy and indispensability of language. Published by Penguin.