On a hot Seoul summer, writer and historian Kyungha produced water with rice and white kimchi and ordered online and delivered to her apartment. Troubled by migraines and digestive disorders, she refused to leave her apartment for treatment. Instead, she worked for her will and decided to dispose of her own property, but could not name the executor. She had a ticket for suicide, a walk letter, unable to perfect its death.
A close friend and professional partner, photographer Inseon, Inseon, awakens Kyungha’s message from this existence. Inseon is in the hospital, recovering from a carpentry accident and she loses her fingers. She asked Kyungha to go to the house on Jeju Island immediately to save Pet Budgie in Inseon, and Kyungha (friendship is precious) did that.
But winter has already appeared on the island: it is covered in snow and the storm is strengthening. Kyungha found the bird motionless, unsure whether it was alive. But then, she had to stay, and she would. The bird, a bud, began to show signs of life.
It is worth explaining the history of the island. In the years after World War II, when South Korea split, its residents strongly leaned towards the left and protested that they were included in the South. Under the supervision of the U.S. Army, government paramilitary personnel who held protests killed thousands of people, estimated to be between 14,000 and 30,000, including women and children, and even babies.
In Hankang’s writings, the snow on Jeju Island covers the murder, but the murder is still lurking below the ground, and anyone can continue to be enough to dig. Some of the surreal qualities of Han Kang’s writing come from the blizzard, which distorts the boundaries of reality and hallucinations, allowing the phantom to radiate fantasy from the distance between past tragedy and past and present atrocities.
Kyungha wrote about the Holocaust: Her last book was about G. But this time it was close and personal. Inseon’s father survived because the prison he was in was overcrowded.
Inseon (or her phantom) appears on Jeju Island in a terrifying snowstorm, and the horror details of 1948 begin to appear as she and Kyungha explore Inseon’s memories and mother’s notes. For example, the fact that Inseon’s father survived emerged, for example, Inseon and Kyungha began to explore Inseon’s mother’s notes. The untitled behind the murder echoes in the narrative: Inseon’s uncle was imprisoned around the same time as her father, shot on the beach with a group of people from another village, and the children were shot in the name of “extinction.” But there is also a fragile redemption in the form of a single candle flame, an idol of the friendship between Kyungha and Inseon.
The best books I’ve read in the last few years are easy.
We don’t separate
Hankang
penguin
pp. 384; 999 rupees
