Bi-lingual Modern Series features bilingual (Korean-English) editions of texts by the most interesting authors from South Korea, which make up the modern canon of the country’s literature. The editors emphasize that the selection of the best stories is crucial for them – but everything in these books is enjoyable: careful editing, aesthetics or an interesting study in the form of a commentary/essay offered after the main text.
Before The Vegetarian (Wegetarianka) was written, Han Kang was already using familiar themes – a great example of this is the short story Convalescence. (In the Italian edition it was combined with the last part of The Vegetarian, precisely because of the similar elements.) The narrator ends up in the hospital with wounds on her ankles, which she got after treatment at a natural medicine clinic; the burn was supposed to help heal the ankle, strained during the sister’s funeral.
The stories, consisting of short, non-chronological fragments, are reminiscent of White Book in their structure and more – in both texts the Han Kang’s simple but poetic and penetrating language really impresses. Convalescence it is filled with a melancholic atmosphere: the sadness of an older sister whose life did not turn out the way she wanted and who died young, and the sadness of the family who has to deal with this tragedy. Han Kang writes masterfully about mourning and about suffering – not literally described, and yet clearly felt.
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