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Patrick Langley
Patrick Langley's debut novel Arkady was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in March 2018. He writes on contemporary art for Frieze, Art Agenda, and other publications. He is a contributing editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


Jesse Ball’s ‘Census’

Book Review

May 2018

Patrick Langley

Book Review

May 2018

Reading Jesse Ball’s new novel feels like being hypnotised, or like having your heart broken – but really it feels like both at once....

Book Review

November 2017

M. John Harrison's 'You Should Come With Me Now'

Patrick Langley

Book Review

November 2017

In a 2012 interview with the Guardian, M. John Harrison argued that the segregation of literature into genres is ‘a...

Han Kang is a disquieting storyteller who leads the reader into the very heart of human experience, where the singular crosses the universal Author of ten books of fiction and poetry in her native Korean, Han’s subversive work has been brought onto the Anglophone stage through close partnership with her award-winning translator Deborah Smith Smith’s elegant renditions of the novels Human Acts (2016) and The Vegetarian (2015) form part of a recent blossoming of international interest in Korean literature; Dalkey Archive’s Library of Korean Literature launched in 2013 and consists of 25 translations so far Originally published as three novellas in South Korea nearly a decade ago, Han has said that The Vegetarian was initially received as ‘very extreme and bizarre’ in Korea It has since become a cult bestseller, with translation rights sold in twenty countries and its central novella ‘Mongolian Mark’ awarded the prestigious Yi Sang Literary Prize in 2005 Human Acts, her latest novel, was awarded the Korean Manhae Literary Prize last year, adding to her numerous other accolades   ‘I believe that humans should be plants’ This line from the great modernist poet Yi Sang, written in the Korean script hangul banned under Japanese rule, reportedly obsessed Han during university and became the seed for The Vegetarian Yi’s dream-like images evoking the violence of imperialism upon the colonial subject are mirrored in Han’s surrealistic and painterly portrayal of a woman’s personal rebellion The novel tells the story of Yeong-hye who, haunted by grotesque dreams, first gives up meat, then food altogether in a radical refusal of human cruelty and destruction In a patriarchal society where vegetarianism is rare, Yeong-hye’s transgression eventually leads to her institutionalisation and force-feeding Han’s life-long exploration of the themes of violence and humanity are here rooted in the anorexic body forming a provocative psychological portrait of a woman’s body politics   Human Acts revisits these themes but pans out to the national stage, excavating the traumatic legacy of the Gwangju massacre in post-war Korean history Opening in the Gwangju Commune, the action unfurls in the crucible of the 1980s student and worker-led democratic movement In 1979 when military dictator Park Chung-Hee, the father

Contributor

August 2014

Patrick Langley

Contributor

August 2014

Patrick Langley’s debut novel Arkady was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in March 2018. He writes on contemporary art for Frieze, Art...

Art

September 2014

Semi Floating Sculpture

Luke Hart

Patrick Langley

Art

September 2014

Luke Hart will meet me at Gate 7. I get the text on the DLR, heading east past Canary...

Ordinary Voids

feature

Issue No. 9

Ed Aves

Patrick Langley

feature

Issue No. 9

I am standing in a parallelogram of shrubbery outside London City Airport. Ed is twisting a dial on his Mamiya RZ67 and squinting into its viewfinder. He...
Car Wash

fiction

January 2013

Patrick Langley

fiction

January 2013

He is sitting on the back seat of a car, somewhere in France. It’s a bright blue day, absurdly hot, and the roads are...
Ryan Trecartin: The Real Internet is Inside You

Art

April 2012

Patrick Langley

Art

April 2012

 ‘What’s that buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing?’ Marshall McLuhan   1: Your Original Is Having A Complete Human Change Meltdown Makeover   It’s difficult to describe Ryan Trecartin’s...
Nigel

poetry

September 2011

Patrick Langley

poetry

September 2011

Jamie sat alone at the edge of the dance floor and wondered how long it would be until Nigel arrived. The band had been...
Beyond the Horizon

fiction

Issue No. 1

Patrick Langley

fiction

Issue No. 1

Listen to the silence, let it ring on. (Joy Division, Transmission) I It is not yet dawn. The city is a distant murmur. Laid...

READ NEXT

feature

January 2013

A Black Hat, Silence and Bombshells : Michael Hofmann at Cambridge & After

Stephen Romer

feature

January 2013

The black hat and the black coat I was familiar with, before I knew their owner. It was Cambridge,...

fiction

November 2015

Three Days in Prague

Naja Marie Aidt

TR. Denise Newman

fiction

November 2015

A sparkling frost-clear landscape exists between them under a soft and smudged sky. Irises exist, blue and yellow, and...

Prize Entry

April 2015

How things are falling.

David Isaacs

Prize Entry

April 2015

i.   Oyster cards were first issued to members of the British public in July 2003; by June 2015...

 

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