New novel by Han Kang addresses massacre in South Korea

Madrid. On December 5, the Penguin Random House publishing house will distribute the Spanish version of the new novel by the South Korean writer and 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Han Kang. In the book, titled Impossible to say goodbye, The writer makes a complaint against oblivion to unearth Korea’s greatest tragedy, which occurred in 1948 on the island of Jeju, where, after a brutal repression by her country’s army, more than 30 thousand people were massacred.

The poetic beauty of his prose is shocking.

Penguin Random House announced the imminent publication of Kang’s new work, which has now become one of the most coveted targets in the publishing world. Hence the urgency of signing the agreement and making it public, since there were other labels interested in acquiring the rights and adding them to their catalogue, which already includes two more titles by the South Korean author: The vegetarian, for which he received the International Booker in 2016, and Greek class his latest work translated to date and published in 2023. In Spanish, Kang also published Blanco, whose rights are held by the independent publisher Rata.

The title of his new novel, Impossible to say goodbye, takes as its starting point a historical event that marked the contemporary development of its country: the so-called Jeju Insurrection or the Jeju Massacre, which refers to the rebellion that began on that island on April 3, 1948 and that was harshly repressed by the South Korean army, causing more than 30 thousand fatalities.

The South Korean writer was recognized with the Nobel Prize on October 10. Here, in an image from 2016. Ap Photo

The rebellion against the South Korean regime lasted more than two years; After culminating one of the most violent periods in the country with the crushing of the guerrilla, the Law of Traitors to the Nation was approved, which, among other measures, banned the Workers’ Party and made it easier for people who mentioned the massacres were tortured and sentenced to long prison terms. It was not until March 2009 that a truth commission seeking reconciliation was created, which wrote a report that concluded that At least 20,000 people who were imprisoned for participating in the Jeju, Yeosu, and Suncheon uprisings, or accused of being communists, were massacred in 20 prisons across the country.. In addition, he estimated the total number of deaths at 30 thousand, that 70 percent of the 230 villages were burned and more than 39 thousand houses destroyed.

Albert Puigdueta, editor of Random House, explained that Impossible to say goodbye “is the culmination of years of writing and reflection that reflect the memory of Jeju and other places affected by historical trauma. The disturbing prose, the shocking images, the violence and the dreamlike spaces of The vegetarian y human acts They are here. Han Kang outdoes herself with prose that exudes frost, cold, snow and evocative twilight. A tribute to the imagination and a powerful denunciation of the oblivion of three female characters.”

Han Kang was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 10, in a ruling by the Swedish Academy in which her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages.