“Because the girl had never learned language at all. For an hour she had held her eyes open, held them in the direction of our mother’s face, but her optic nerves never had time to awaken and so that face had remained beyond reach. For her, there would have been only a voice. Don’t die. For God’s sake don’t die. Unintelligible words, the only words she was ever to hear.”

“Because the girl had never learned language at all. For an hour she had held her eyes open, held them in the direction of our mother’s face, but her optic nerves never had time to awaken and so that face had remained beyond reach. For her, there would have been only a voice. Don’t die. For God’s sake don’t die. Unintelligible words, the only words she was ever to hear.”

— Han Kang