Han Kang

Shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize From Booker Prize-winner and literary phenomenon Han Kang, a lyrical and disquieting exploration of personal grief, written through the prism of the color white While on a writer's residency, a nameless narrator wanders the twin white worlds of the blank page and snowy Warsaw. THE WHITE BOOK becomes a meditation on the color white, as well as a fictional journey inspired by an older sister who died in her mother's arms, a few hours old. The narrator grapples with the tragedy that has haunted her family, an event she colors in stark white--breast milk, swaddling bands, the baby's rice cake-colored skin--and, from here, visits all that glows in her memory: from a white dog to sugar cubes. As the writer reckons with the enormity of her sister's death, Han Kang's trademark frank and chilling prose is softened by retrospection, introspection, and a deep sense of resilience and love. THE WHITE BOOK--ultimately a letter from Kang to her sister--offers powerful philosophy and personal psychology on the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.

The White Book

clara

Everything passes. She bears this remembrance— the knowledge that everything she has clung to will fall away from her and vanish-through the streets where the sleet is falling, that is neither rain nor snow, neither ice nor water, that dampens her eyebrows and streams from her forehead whether she stands still or hurries on, closes her eyes or opens them.

When long days finally come to a close, a time to be quiet is needed. As when, unconsciously in front of a stove, I hold my stiff hands out to the silence, fingers splayed in its scant warmth.

Stale pain has not yet withered quite away, fresh pain has not yet burst into bloom. Days in which darkness and light are both imperfect swell with memories of the past. The only things that the mind cannot examine are memories of the future.

Her desk has been swept bare. There is only the incandescent bulb above it, giving off light and heat.

The blinds have not been lowered, and headlights can be seen moving along the main road at sporadic intervals now that midnight has passed.

She is sitting at the desk, like someone who has never known suffering.

Not like someone who has just been crying or is about to.

As though there has never been a time when the only comfort lay in the impossibility of forever.

There are certain memories that remain inviolate to the ravages of time. And to those of suffering. It is not true that everything is colored by time and suffering. It is not true that they bring everything to ruin.

Each wave becomes dazzlingly white at the moment of its shattering. Farther out, the tranquil body of water flashes like the scales of innumerable fish. The glittering of multitudes is there. The shifting, stirring, tossing of multitudes. Nothing is eternal.

Mara D Alo Fonseca

On cold mornings, that first white cloud of escaping breath is proof that we are living. Proof of our bodies warmth. Cold air rushes into dark lungs, soaks up the heat of our body and is exhaled as perceptible form, white flecked with grey. Our lives miraculous diffusion, out into the empty air.

Claudine

The more stubborn isolation, the more vivid these unlooked-for fragments, the more oppressive their weight. So that it seems the place I flee to is not so much a city on the other side of the world as further into my own interior.

Each moment is a leap forwards from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time's keen edges are constantly renewed. We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our life lived thus far, and take that perilous step out into the empty air. Not because we can claim any particular courage, but because there is no other way. Now, in this moment, I feel that vertiginous thrill course through me. As I step recklessly into time I have not yet lived, into this book I have not yet written.

rain/anagha

I cannot now return to the time before that knowledge.

The only things that the mind cannot examine are memories of the future. 

As though there has never been a time when the only comfort lay in the impossibility of

If silence could be condensed into the smallest, most solid object, this is how it would feel

in the clarity of their stillness, in their

Your sleep is clean, and the fact of your living is nothing to be ashamed of.

 sleep has been scattered and shallow. Even if she did drop off for a while, she would rise to find the world just as dark as before. 

Everything passes. She bears this remembrance—the knowledge that everything she has clung to will fall away from her and vanish—

Standing at this border where land and water meet, watching the seemingly endless recurrence of the waves (though this eternity is in fact illusion: the earth will one day vanish, everything will one day vanish), the fact that our lives are no more than brief instants is felt with unequivocal clarity.

nico

if she believes that she has never been shattered. she believe that she will be shattered no more

In the distance, the surface of the water bulges upward. The winter sea mounts its approach, surging closer in. The wave reaches its greatest possible height and shatters in a spray of white. The shattered water slides back over the sandy shore.

Standing at this border where land and water meet,watching the seemingly endless recurrence of the waves (though this eternity is in fact illusion: the earth will one day vanish, everything will one day vanish), the fact that our lives are no more than brief instants is felt with unequivocal clarity

Each wave becomes dazzlingly white at the momentof its shattering. Farther out, the tranquil body of water flashes like the scales of innumerable fish. The glittering of multitudes is there. The shifting, stirring, tossing of multitudes. Nothing is eternal

Shortlisted for the Man Booker International 2018 From the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2016 From the author of The Vegetarian and Human Acts comes a book like no other. The White Book is a meditation on colour, beginning with a list of white things. It is a book about mourning, rebirth and the tenacity of the human spirit. It is a stunning investigation of the fragility, beauty and strangeness of life. Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith.

Malou Vandeput

A book that beautifully and creatively depicts grief in ways that I personally have never seen done before. I was devastated and sorely in love with the shifting perspectives and seeing with my own eyes a reality of what could have been. All in all, I'm glad that this is my first read of the year! 

adriftzoey

the book read more like a poetry book or as a series of meditations on the topic of grief. there were brief moments that i loved and felt were very moving, but overall i don't think ill really remember this one down the road. i liked it for what it was, but i think i had set my expectations too high. a 2 felt too low but a 3 felt too high.

Lilo

A book that commands vivid imagery in the mind makes me think of how this can be turned into a film. 

Han Kang is remarkable - and I said that even before we got the Nobel Prize for Lit!

Andrea Hak-Kovacs

That feeling of living a life that is not meant to be ours. A replacement, a stand-in, a decoy. A theif. What makes us more deserving? How do we outlive that guilt? That grief.

𓆨

Isabella 

this is so so good; it's brilliant. the author was able to describe white as so many things. it's so beautifully written. i could feel the emotions through the words written i love it

i distaste the color white and reading abundantly white in this book is a work of meditation from life and at the same time an attempt of mediation for grief, in a whisper of let me be quiet in pain but loud in the vastness of white.

solitones

Sixty-five short interconnected chapters portray humanity and all its suffering and resiliency.

Cait🪼

A wonderful meditation of simplicity, grief, emptiness, and (above all) observation. Breathtaking.

azliana aziz

han kang can do better than this. some of the 'poetic vignettes' read like some of nell lyrics. hell, jongwan would like this. 


you know it's bad when i was left unmoved by the time i finished because the book is literally! a meditation! on grief! which is my favorite theme ever.
:/

i read this book 5/6 years ago and i actually didn’t appreciate the beauty of it, re read it recently and i fell for it all over again. 

A must read for sure!!

dearestmoon 

Definitely what you would expect. Extremely deep and extremely sad. A sadness that is so deep-rooted I cannot even describe. You feel like you’re covered covered in heavy fog. 

Valentina

Gia Palamos

Kang Han

From the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian comes a stunning meditation on the colour white; about light, about death and about ritualFrom the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The VegetarianBoth the most autobiographical and the most experimental book to date from South Korean master Han Kang. Written while on a writer's residency in Warsaw, a city palpably scarred by the violence of the past, the narrator finds herself haunted by the story of her older sister, who died a mere two hours after birth. A fragmented exploration of white things - the swaddling bands that were also her shroud, the breast milk she did not live to drink, the blank page on which the narrator herself attempts to reconstruct the story - unfold in a powerfully poetic distillation. As she walks the unfamiliar, snow-streaked streets, lined by buildings formerly obliterated in the Second World War, their identities blur and overlap as the narrator wonders, 'Can I give this life to you?'. The White Book is a book like no other. It is a meditation on a colour, on the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.(photographs in print edition only)

Beau

No other word beyond 'beautiful' comes to mind as I reflect on this book. Up there with Gratitude by Oliver Sacks, and The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Tim Keller, The White Book is in a class of 'small books' that are so incredibly rich, profound, and mysterious that they deserve multiple readings over a lifetime.

Meditations on metaphors, stories, philosophies, and musings to do with the color 'white' may seem shallow at face value, but within these pages (with a layout designed so intentionally) lies words that have been thought and labored over. The result is anything and everything, short paragraphs to longer contemplations that cause tears to well up in ones eyes; the kind of reflections that make you stop wherever you're reading, look up, and honestly feel the emotions Kang is channeling into her stories of growing up, wandering the streets of Waraw, as the ghost of her older sister, who died during childbirth, haunts her mind and heart on every corner.
Parting

Don't die. For God's sake don't die.

I open my lips and mutter the words you heard on opening your black eyes, you who were ignorant of language. I press down with all my strength onto the white paper. I believe no other words of parting can be found. Don't die. Live.
Powerful things await inside this book. Truly one of the most original, haunting and melancholic things I've ever read.

Sabrina D. 

雪 xue

!!! this is a novel that must be read slowly to appreciate the beautiful poignancy of every line. han kang is simply a genius... her mind is soooooo unparalleled.

Alithea

Anya Azrael

Luke Jones

The White Book reads like a poetic stream of consciousness. Some chapters were beautiful, but overall I wasn't gripped.

Linn 

Victoria Simansjah

A short read that you can devour in one sitting. The White Books is a collection of one-page short stories evolving in themes of grief, wounds, life, and motherhood. Emotionally raw and intricately crafted words that felt closer to poetry than a story. A perfect read when you want to fill in short pockets of time.

Matthew Xu

Really enjoyed this read overall, and a great reminder to make sure that poetry/prose stays in my consistent To Read rotation. The overall mood of the book was really haunting but beautiful, evoking a deep sense of awe and fear about human mortality. 

The thematic approach that Han Kang took - running through a free, yet deliberate, set of associations with the color white - unfolds in a beautiful way as we follow along through a story within a story. This is definitely a book that lends itself to re-reads, and I want to hold myself to revisiting the full novel now that I understand the narrative arc. I spent a lot of time in the middle section trying to fully understand who the narrator was and what context we were taking, and there was a serious emotional punch upon reaching the third section of the novel and realizing this is a combined perspective and projection of the authors experiences and her own sense of guilt and awe that her life is the result of an older sister’s passing. 

The overall reconstruction of the color white was also beautiful, and I think the combination of cultural perspectives that Han brings really added a lot to the different associations with the color white. Whereas my personal associations with white are typically around purity, Han explores everything from sleep to sleeplessness, fear to hope, and everything else in between. 

If I was in a different headspace, I do wonder if the overall mood of the novel would have stuck with me as much. There’s a particular sense of grieving and loss that relies on a very specific context from Han’s life - I wouldn’t expect her to make the poems more broad just for the sake of being “relatable”. That said, I think I just struggled a bit to grasp what the deeper “point” of the novel was, outside of a personal reflection on some deeply emotional and challenging thoughts through the authors own life. Again, probably another reason for me to revisit and reread the book at another point, but wanted to capture these thoughts while they’re still fresh. Still an absolutely great read - my favorite poem of the binch was Incandescent Light.

The White Book

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