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Greek Lessons: A Novel
Han Kang · 2024
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A dazzling novel about the saving grace of language and human connection, from the “visionary” (New York Times Book Review) author of the International Booker Prize winner The Vegetarian<br/><br/>“Both a disquieting journey about the loss of sense and a return to the sensorium of touch and intimacy, Greek Lessons soars with sensuous and revelatory insight.”—Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings<br/><br/>A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Time, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal<br/><br/>"Now and then, language would thrust its way into her sleep like a skewer through meat, startling her awake several times a night."<br/><br/>In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.<br/><br/>Soon the two discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it's the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence.<br/><br/>Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish—the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to each other. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity—their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression.<br/><br/>Greek Lessons is the story of the unlikely bond between this pair and a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection—a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive.
Violets
Kyung-Sook Shin · 2022
By Man Asian Literary Prize winner Kyung-Sook Shin, "a moving delve into a lonely psyche" that follows a neglected young woman's search for human connection in contemporary Seoul (YZ Chin).<br/>San is twenty-two and alone when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul’s bustling city center. Haunted by childhood rejection, she stumbles through life—painfully vulnerable, stifled, and unsure. She barely registers to others, especially by the ruthless standards of 1990s South Korea.<br/>Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San meets a curious cast of characters: the nonspeaking shop owner, a brash coworker, quiet farmers, and aggressive customers. Fueled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she plunges headfirst into obsession with a passing magazine photographer.<br/><br/>In Violets, best-selling author Kyung-Sook Shin explores misogyny, erasure, and repressed desire, as San desperately searches for both autonomy and attachment in the unforgiving reality of contemporary Korean society.
The White Book
Han Kang · 2019
FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE “[Han Kang writes in] intense poetic prose that . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—from the Nobel Prize citation SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE • A “formally daring, emotionally devastating, and deeply political” (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of personal grief through the prism of the color white, from the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian “Stunningly beautiful. . . one of the smartest reflections on what it means to remember those we’ve lost.”—NPR Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, Han Kang’s The White Book is a meditation on color, as well as an attempt to make sense of her older sister’s death, who died in her mother’s arms just a few hours after she was born. In captivating, starkly beautiful language, The White Book is a letter from Kang to her sister, offering a multilayered exploration of color and its absence, and of the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit.
The Palace of Illusions A Novel
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni • 2009
Uncategorized
The Vegetarian A Novel
Han Kang • 2016
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas • 2003
Human Acts
Han Kang • 2017
Phaedrus
Plato • 1995
Almond A Novel
Won-Pyung Sohn • 2021
Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami • 2006
Paradise Rot A Novel
Jenny Hval • 2018
All the Lovers in the Night
Mieko Kawakami • 2022
The Eyes Are the Best Part
Monika Kim • 2024
The Passion According to G.H.
Clarice Lispector • 2012
Água Viva
Clarice Lispector • 2012
A Breath of Life
Clarice Lispector • 2012
Near to the Wild Heart
Clarice Lispector • 2012
Mother Mary Comes To Me: A memoir of Arundhati Roy
Casey Jordan • 2025
Lapvona
Ottessa Moshfegh • 2022
The Song of Achilles A Novel
Madeline Miller • 2012
