Human Acts

Recommended by Suzanne Spreadbury, Dean of Academic Programs, Harvard Extension School

When Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2024, I was intrigued as I was not familiar with her work. I immediately read “Human Acts,” which is a fictionalized depiction of the May 1980 Gwangju Uprising, a student-led demonstration protesting South Korea’s military coup and subsequent martial law. The number of individuals killed remains contested, with estimates of 165, 600, and 2,300. Han Kang brings to life the student stories behind these numbers as well as those who survived but struggle to the present day with physical pain and psychological trauma. The book is artfully written and will forever change your emotional and intellectual understanding of courageous acts of political resistance, which in this case came from those as young as 15 and not much older than 21. She is an author poetically complicating our modern times.