Han Kang

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD “[Han Kang’s] intense poetic prose . . . confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”—The Nobel Committee for Literature, in the citation for the Nobel Prize Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian—and her first published in English since winning the Nobel Prize—We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter in Korean history. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, KIRKUS REVIEWS, BOOK RIOT, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY • ONE OF BOOKPAGE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR “[A] masterpiece.”—The Boston Globe “A haunting exploration of friendship amid historical trauma.”—Time “A novel that is both disquieting and entrancing.”—The Economist One winter morning in Seoul, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at the hospital. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn’t yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into darkness that awaits her at her friend’s house. Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully brings to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable pain—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.

A Novel

We Do Not Part

Saima

I slipped on a pair of trainers and opened the front door for the first time in two months. The summer sun flooded the west-facing corridor; the afternoon light was a revelation. 

It can be dificult to distinguish for- bearance from resignation, sorrow from partial reconciliation, fortitude from loneliness. I thought about how difficult it can be to tell these emotions apart on the basis of facial expressions and gestures, about how the person in question may struggle to distinguish these feelings in themselves

Nate

That day, she came to understand something clearly. That when people died, their bodies went cold. Snow remained on their cheeks, and a thin layer of bloody ice set over their faces.

Inseon had told me to address older people here as samchun. Only outsiders say ajossi or ajumoni, halmoni or haraboji, she said. Ifyou start off by calling them samchun, even if you can't string together a sentence in Jeju-mal, theyre likely to be less guarded, thinking you’ve lived on the island for a good while.

It started with those research folk. There weren't many who saw it with their own eyes, they said, and asked me to tell them, said if I didn't get it off my chest before I died, no one would ever know. I figured that wasn't wrong, so I told them that very day. That was the first time. Once I did though, others kept coming. They’d get me talking, then they'd leave, and I’d be turned inside out for days of course. I knew what it'd do to me, and stil, as much as I could, I did as they asked.

Past the reach of the light from the water's surface.

Past the point where gravity overtakes buoyancy.

We Do Not Part quotes

Join the club