The White Book
UK
2017
From the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian
Both 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.
Translated by Deborah Smith
(photographs in print edition only)
Portobello Books
Published: 2 November 2017
Hardback, B Format
129x198mm, 128 pages
ISBN: 9781846276293
Description From the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian 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.
source: https://www.amazon.com/The-White-Book/dp/1846276292
UK
2017
From the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian
Both 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.
Translated by Deborah Smith
(photographs in print edition only)
Portobello Books
Published: 2 November 2017
Hardback, B Format
129x198mm, 128 pages
ISBN: 9781846276293
- Country U.K.
- Translator Deborah Smith
- Publisher Portobello Books
- Published Year 2017
- GenreLiterature - Korean literature - Contemporary fiction
Description From the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian 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.
source: https://www.amazon.com/The-White-Book/dp/1846276292