Han’s style is spare. Loss, grief, doubt, pain and fear haunt the characters she fleshes out. Dark shadows roam, tensions simmer, and readers must brace themselves against raw outbursts of violence. The body and the mind are hemmed in by existing systems. And both defiantly try to break free. Language is connection, language alienates. Love liberates, love enslaves. Desire is salvation, desire is despair. Memory heals, memory of trauma is passed on like poison from generation to generation. Han’s works pulse with the messy contradictions of human existence, the tangles that push some to the edge of madness. Her stories are provocative, sensual, visceral, often shocking. They raise questions about history and human behaviour that are hard to ignore.