Han Kang Archive
Grief and Transformation in Han Kang’s The White Book
Over the course of the fragmented, deeply imagistic book (which Kang has described as a narrative poem), whiteness expands beyond solid objects into concepts and sensations, its every iteration part of an adjacent world in which her sister is not dead and it is she, instead, who is absent.
Cultural Legibility in America’s Dark Chapter
What does it mean to be culturally legible? And what does cultural legibility mean with regard to writing about or from within one’s own culture?
Loving the Stranger Beside You: Han Kang’s The Vegetarian
In The Vegetarian, a collection of three linked novellas, author Han Kang creates and then protects an open moral space between Yeong-hye’s sudden conversion to vegetarianism and her family’s perception of it.
The Three Percent 10 Years Later: An Interview With Chad Post
Since Chad Post, founding publisher of Open Letter Books, created The Three Percent blog in 2007, the term the “three percent” has become a household one to highlight the percentage of translated books published in the United States.
Past the City Limit Sign: The Role of Rural in 2016 Books
What kinds of stories will emerge that focus on rural or city settings during a Trump presidency? Will the typical themes continue to be cemented or will variations become the norm?
An End-of-2016 Books in Translation Reading Wishlist
Despite having read and enjoyed works in translation like Christos Ikonomou's Something Will Happen, You'll See and Burhan Sönmez's İstanbul, İstanbul, I know that the full range of works in translation this year alone is vast (580 books according to Three Percent's 2016 database).
Han Kang’s THE VEGETARIAN Wins Man Booker International Prize
Last week, the winner of the newly refocused Man Booker International Prize was announced to be The Vegetarian, a novel by the Korean writer Han Kang, translated into English by Deborah Smith. Originally published as three novellas, the book is the surreal story of Yeong-hye, a young Korean woman
“Sufficient Ambiguity”: An Interview with Deborah Smith
Deborah Smith is a translator of Korean and the founder of a new non-profit London-based publisher, Tilted Axis Press. Recently, she has worked with Korean author Han Kang to bring her novel The Vegetarian to an English-reading audience. The book is a collection of three linked novellas about a