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Human Acts: A Novel Audiobook
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FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
“[Han Kang writes in] intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”—from the Nobel Prize citation
The internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian presents a “rare and astonishing” (The Observer) portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice.
“Compulsively readable, universally relevant, and deeply resonant . . . in equal parts beautiful and urgent.”—The New York Times Book Review
Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award • One of the Best Books of the Year: The Atlantic, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, HuffPost, Medium, Library Journal
Amid a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.
The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend who meets his own fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.
An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of an historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.
Read by Sandra Oh, Greta Jung, Jae Jung, Jennifer Kim, Raymond J. Lee, and Keong Sim, with an introduction read by Deborah Smith
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“A wide cast of narrators personalizes the Gwangju uprising in South Korea in 1980. The many voices include well-known actor Sandra Oh, from Grey’s Anatomy, as well Deborah Smith, Greta Jung, Jae Jung, Jennifer Kim, Raymond J. Lee, and Keong Smith. The mix of male and female narrators helps the listener keep track of the many characters in a swiftly moving plot involving violence and fear. The diverse cast also helps the listener feel the tragic loss of those who suffered during this turbulent time. The cast works together to deliver a story that many outside of South Korea may not have heard.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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Stunning . . . Han Kang has an ambition as large as Milton’s struggle with God: She wants to reconcile the ways of humanity to itself.
— NPR -
Human Acts is unique in the intensity and scale of this brutality. . . . The novel details a bloody history that was deliberately forgotten and is only now being recovered.
— The Nation -
Exquisitely crafted.
— O: the Oprah Magazine -
Human Acts speaks the unspeakable.
— Vanity Fair -
The long wake of the killings plays out across the testimonies of survivors as well as the dead, in scenarios both gorily real and beautifully surreal.
— Vulture -
Engrossing . . . Unnerving and painfully immediate . . . [Human Acts] is torturously compelling, a relentless portrait of death and agony that never lets you look away. Han’s prose . . . is both spare and dreamy, full of haunting images and echoing language. She mesmerizes, drawing you into the horrors of Gwangju; questioning humanity, implicating everyone.
— Los Angeles Times -
Revelatory . . . nothing short of breathtaking . . . What Han has re-created is not just an extraordinary record of human suffering during one particularly contentious period in Korean history, but also a written testament to our willingness to risk discomfort, capture, even death in order to fight for a cause or help others in times of need.
— San Francisco Chronicle -
Where Kang excels is in her unflinching, unsentimental descriptions of death. I am hard pressed to think of another novel that deals so vividly and convincingly with the stages of physical decay.
— Boston Globe -
Absorbing . . . Han uses her talents as a storyteller of subtlety and power to bring this struggle out of the middle distance of ‘history’ and into the intimate space of the irreplaceable human individual.
— Minneapolis Star-Tribune“Pristine, expertly paced, and gut-wrenching . . . Human Acts grapples with the fallout of a massacre and questions what humans are willing to die for and in turn what they must live through. Kang approaches these difficult and inexorable queries with originality and fearlessness, making Human Acts a must-read. -
Though her subject matter is terrifying, her prose is too beautiful, her images too perfectly crystallized to wince and turn away from them. . . . Human Acts is a slim novel weighted with philosophical and spiritual inquiry, but if offers no consolations. Rather, it grapples with who we are, what we are able to endure, and what we inflict upon other people.
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch -
Reading about human acts like these can be excruciating. But true to the urgency conveyed through its frequent use of second-person narration, Han’s book is also filled with human acts involving profiles in courage that inspire hope.
— Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel -
Inventive, intense and provocative . . . a work of considerable bravery . . . Human Acts is a profound act of protest in itself.
— Newsday
Awards
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An Amazon Editor’s Top Pick for January 2017
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Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
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Among longlisted titles for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, 2018
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Winner of Malaparte Prize, 2017
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Among longlisted titles for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, 2018
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Winner of Malaparte Prize, 2017
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Among longlisted titles for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, 2018
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Winner of Malaparte Prize, 2017
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Among longlisted titles for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, 2018
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Winner of Malaparte Prize, 2017
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Among longlisted titles for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, 2018
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Winner of Malaparte Prize, 2017
Human Acts Listener Reviews
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About Han Kang
Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. In 1993 she made her literary debut as a poet and was first published as a novelist in 1994. In 2024 she won the Nobel Prize for Literature. A participant in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, she has won the Man Booker International Prize, the Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today’s Young Artist Award, and the Manhae Prize for Literature. She works as a professor in the department of creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
About the Narrators
Deborah Smith is a New York Times bestselling author of numerous contemporary romance novels, including A Place to Call Home, On Bear Mountain, and The Crossroads Cafe. There are more than 3 million copies of her books in print. She is married and lives in the mountains of northern Georgia.
Piper Goodeve began narrating in 2011 and has since given voice to over a hundred titles. As a stage actress, Piper has appeared off Broadway as well as at theaters across the country, such as the McCarter, the Weston Playhouse, and Syracuse Stage. Happily splitting her time between Brooklyn and Vermont, Piper holds a BA from New York University and received her MFA in acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep.
Cary Hite has performed in several theaters across the country as a cast member in the longest-running African American play in history, The Diary of Black Men. He also appeared in Edward II, Fences, Macbeth, Good Boys, Side Effects May Vary, and the indie feature The City Is Mine. He has voiced several projects for AudibleKids, including Souls Look Back in Wonder, From Slave Ship to Freedom Road, and Papa, Do You Love Me?
Sandra Oh is a two-time Genie Award-winner, Golden Globe Award-winner, and three-time Emmy Award-nominated Canadian actress. She is known to American audiences for her Emmy nominated role in ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, her roles in the films Under the Tuscan Sun and Sideways, and her supporting role on HBO’s Arli$$.
Emily Tremaine is an actress and audiobook narrator. She has acted in several major motion pictures, including The Wolf of Wall Street and Obvious Child, and was one of the narrators featured on the audio version of Chuck Klosterman’s Eating the Dinosaur.
James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.