Björn recenserade Jag tar inte farväl av Kang Han
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5 stjärnor
Yeah, that's... a choice of a book to read with the news right now.
Even the infants?
Yes, because total annihilation was the goal.
Annihilation of what?
Communists.
Like in Human Acts, Kang revisits the unhealed scar of Korea's 20th century. This time with the focus on the late 40s and 50s, as the Cold War was ramping up, as the Korean War was beginning, as absolutely no dissidence could be tolerated. So there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands buried and officially forgotten. Hundreds of thousands of families forced to live without knowing, for 50 years until the government admitted it. How do you move on from that?
The snow starts falling in the narrator's dream and never stops. Snow covers everything. Snow freezes everything. Snow is death. But snow is also malleable, it insulates, it shows everything in sharp contrast.
For a long time I'm …
Yeah, that's... a choice of a book to read with the news right now.
Even the infants?
Yes, because total annihilation was the goal.
Annihilation of what?
Communists.
Like in Human Acts, Kang revisits the unhealed scar of Korea's 20th century. This time with the focus on the late 40s and 50s, as the Cold War was ramping up, as the Korean War was beginning, as absolutely no dissidence could be tolerated. So there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands buried and officially forgotten. Hundreds of thousands of families forced to live without knowing, for 50 years until the government admitted it. How do you move on from that?
The snow starts falling in the narrator's dream and never stops. Snow covers everything. Snow freezes everything. Snow is death. But snow is also malleable, it insulates, it shows everything in sharp contrast.
For a long time I'm not completely sold on Kang's narrative choices here; the way the novel starts in personal trauma, swerves into Haushoferian survival drama, then suddenly becomes a dig through archives, through memories. But man, that finale. Those last lines. That snow.