The language of love: Greek Lessons, by Han Kang, reviewed

In the wake of the death of her mother, divorce from her husband and the loss of custody of her son, a young writer and poet in Seoul turns her attentions to lessons in ancient Greek. She walks miles across the city to the classroom, dressed in a black jacket, black scarf and black shirt – a ‘sombre uniform, which makes it seem as if she’s just come from a funeral’ – and devotes herself to the unfamiliar alphabet, verbs and nouns. This delight in words – ‘the wondrous promise of the phonemes’ – has sustained her since childhood, when she first scratched Hangul, the Korean alphabet, into the dirt. There is only one barrier to her love of language. Not for the first time, she has completely lost the power of speech.

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Charles Amos

What my GB News incest row critics fail to understand

The other main character of Han Kang’s lyrical new novel is usually found at the front of the classroom.