Greek Lessons

"You’ll be interested to hear that there’s a new novel from Han Kang , author of the savage, International Booker Prize-winning The Vegetarian . Greek Lessons is another slim, brooding little novel about difficult protagonists facing inexplicable problems—this time, it features a woman who has lost the ability to speak, and her language tutor who is losing his vision. Elegaic and tender, it is more abstract and less violent than The Vegetarian . Given the linguistic complexities of imparting the experience of learning Ancient Greek as a Korean speaker, it must have been a nightmare to translate, but Deborah Smith and Emily Jae Won have created a clean, clear translation (albeit not without ambiguities—which I imagine are baked into Kang’s prose) that I zipped through during a single long train journey. Strange, thoughtful, compelling. And look out for The Last Pomegranate Tree by Bachtyar Ali, one of Iraq’s most celebrated authors. It follows a father searching for his son in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein. This new translation from the original Kurdish by Kareem Abdulrahman is reportedly an excellent introduction to Ali’s work. Kirkus described it as “[a]ltogether extraordinary: a masterwork of modern Middle Eastern literature deserving the widest possible audience.” What books are you most looking forward to this summer? Let us know. Send us a tweet , or post on our Facebook page . Part of our best books of 2023 series"