TEHRAN-The Persian translation of the novel “Greek Lessons” written by the South Korean author Han Kang has been released in the bookstores across Iran.

The book has been translated into Persian by Fariba Arabzadeh and published by the Tehran-based Lega Press, Mehr reported.

Originally Published in South Korea in 2011, the book is about a young, recently mute woman, who begins taking a class in Ancient Greek language in an effort to reclaim language in some way. Her teacher, who is slowly going blind, draws closer to her over the course of their classes. As they become more intimately connected, they explore their inner pains and tensions together.

Soon the two discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it’s the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence.

“Greek Lessons” tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish—the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to each other. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity—their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression.

It is the story of the unlikely bond between this pair and a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection—a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive.

Han Kang, 54, rose to international prominence for her novel “The Vegetarian,” which became the first Korean language novel to win the International Booker Prize for fiction in 2016. In 2024, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, a first for an Asian woman and for a Korean, “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

SS/SAB