The White Book

by ,

Hardcover, 160 pages

English language

Published Aug. 24, 2019 by Crown/Archetype.

ISBN:
978-0-525-57306-7
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OCLC Number:
1084730998

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(1 review)

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, Han Kang’s The White Book is a meditation on color, as well as an attempt to make sense of her older sister’s death, who died in her mother’s arms just a few hours after she was born.

In captivating, starkly beautiful language, The White Book is a letter from Kang to her sister, offering a multilayered exploration of color and its absence, and of the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit.

2 editions

reviewed The White Book by Han Kang

These Pages

The White Book is both a gorgeous, touching, spacious artwork and a poetic, personal journey. It comprises short vignettes, none more than three pages long in the English translation, all contemplations on the colour white and its resonance with the tragedy of the author/narrator's older sister, who died hours after her birth.

Even with the tragic content, the book retains a sense of the joy about the unlikely beauty of living in this world. The short chapters are occasionally punctuated by photographs that are themselves wonderful moments. The finished object is contemplative, and its strength is in its minimalism, leaving ample space to consider Kang's lyrical writing.

Subjects

  • Fiction, family life
  • Fiction, psychological
  • Korea, fiction