The gulf between the living and the dead defines human nature. Yet artists and writers have always tried to cross the divide, whether through ghost stories, parallel universes or historical fiction, in hopes of returning people to something resembling life. Even this attempt, done well, can be powerful, restoring the voices and likenesses of those we can no longer interact with. But this metaphor is also a minefield, especially when dealing with real people, and the risks of getting it wrong are high: fictional life can turn people into puppets, or reduce them to symbols or caricatures. This week, we publish two reviews that take very different approaches to resurrecting the dead, particularly victims of brutal violence.

First, here are four new stories atlantic monthlyBooks section:

South Korean author and 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang’s novel is set in the history of his country, particularly its “bloody past as a pawn in great power politics and the war against communism,” by Judith Shulevitz wrote we are not separatedHan’s latest book will be translated into English. According to Shulewitz, the past "can seep in, especially when the details are largely forgotten or obscured." we are not separated Tells the long-suppressed story of the 1948 Jeju Island Massacre, in which anti-communist authorities murdered tens of thousands of people. The whereabouts of the dead are never fully ascertained, as searching for them is a crime; they appear in Han's story not as full characters but as ghosts that haunt the living. When the narrator arrives at Jeju Island, it seems "suspended between life and death." She noticed the howling wind and falling snow. Shulevitz writes that these elements give the reader the impression of the "restless souls" of countless people who died decades ago, noting Han's "quintessentially light touch": her ghostly presence is felt in the weather is felt rather than felt in the character who speaks or acts.

in her latest novel The rest is memoryLily Tucker takes a different approach. She imagined the life of Czesława Kwoka, a real Polish girl who died in Auschwitz in 1943. Tucker was shocked by several photos of her at Auschwitz. this new york timesand found only the sparse biographical information. Out of curiosity, she decided to write a novel that, as Robert Rubsum wrote, "filled the void." Tucker weaves together her fabricated story with nonfiction passages—facts, records, statistics about the Holocaust. Russam noted that while this approach did contextualize Cheshuawa's life, it also meant that the biographical information Tucker concocted about the girl felt "fragile and could easily be overshadowed by the documentation."

These two novels demonstrate how fraught literature’s efforts to rise from the dead can be. In Han's book, the massacred people remain anonymous and inaccessible, their memories seeping into the living Koreans in strange and uncanny ways. Instead, Tucker attempts to enliven her Czeslawa with fictional details and anecdotes, but her portrait has the opposite effect—a character that doesn’t feel quite real. However, Roussam believes that there is a way to resurrect the dead without ventriloquism: the case of Patrick Modiano is a valid example. Brother DoraInspired by the story of a young Jewish girl who ran away from home during World War II and was later deported to Auschwitz. Modiano concluded that no one, including himself, knew how Dora spent the days after her disappearance. By acknowledging this, Rubsam wrote, "Modiano allowed his absence to testify on her behalf," demonstrating that the sum of Dora was much greater than the parts he could assemble after the fact. Perhaps the key is to let absence lie, to acknowledge the void and to respect what we don’t know (and can’t know).

Where did Han Kang's nightmare come from?

Judith Shulevitz

The Korean Nobel Prize winner returns again and again to Korea's bloody past in her novels.

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what to read

radium girlKate Moore

In the late 1910s, companies used radium, a radioactive substance found in uranium ore, to make the numbers and dials on watches glow in the dark. They hired young women to apply the substance and encouraged employees to swirl the brush between their lips to achieve great results. Radium accumulated in their bones, killing many - and they glowed at night as the radium destroyed their bodies from the inside. Eventually, the women's groups took two different companies—American Radium and Radium Dial—to court, and after years of fighting, their former employers were finally held accountable. While financial compensation is important to cover medical bills and provide for their families, the women mainly want the truth to be revealed; at least 50 of them died before the trial ended. Moore testified that the USRC and Radium Dial knowingly sentenced the painters to death for profit and denied that there was any risk to their health, even though their own medical examinations proved otherwise. What's more, she puts these workers front and center as they have full lives before and after they pick up a paintbrush. — Vanessa Armstrong

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beyond doomscroll

Charlie Worzel

Viewing the devastation in Los Angeles through the prism of our fractured social media ecosystem can feel profoundly disorienting. The country is burning; your friends are going on vacation; Donald Trump will be inaugurated as president next week; the government is setting fire to a "land grab"; and a new cannabis drink will help you "crush" Dry January. Mutual aid posts sit alongside those from climate denialists and doomsdayers. Stay online long enough and it's easy to feel like the world is ending simultaneously but somehow remain indifferent to that fact. It all feels ridiculous. One viral post suggested that "climate change will appear as a series of disasters viewed through your phone, with the camera getting closer and closer to where you live until you are the one filming it." Just scroll a little longer and you'll find out The author of the post wrote this sentence while on the toilet (although the author later deleted the confession).

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