I was unhappy at home and equally unhappy elsewhere, so tell me, where should I have gone?
I’ve never been happy. Is there some tortured soul forever at my back, clutching at my throat, my limbs? I’ve only ever wanted to run away, an extremely basic impulse, the pain that provokes a cry, the pinch that produces a scream. Sitting with my knees up at the back of the bus, looking as though I wouldn’t hurt a fly, and all that time longing to shatter the window with my fist. Greedy for the blood that would stream down my palm, I would have lapped it up as a cat does milk. What was it that I was trying to run away from, what was it that tormented me so much I longed to flee to the other side of the world? And what held me back, hobbling me, crippling me? What were the fetters that weighed me down, preventing the leap that would transfuse this sickening blood?

Han Kang’s works often strike me as retellings of myths for which no original exists