White - Han Kang

A story about something white that can never be defiled, can absolutely never be defiled!

This is White, a novel by Han Kang, the first Korean author to win the Man Booker Prize. Selected as a finalist for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, the book was first published in May 2016, based on a first draft conceived in the winter of 2013 and completed in 2014, meticulously refined and cherished. This novel, which blurs the boundaries between life and death, is composed of 65 stories that are perfectly suited to be read as a book of poetry.

Swaddling clothes, first clothes, sugar cubes, breath, moon, rice, waves, blank paper, white hair, burial shroud…. The list of white things called forth by the author branches into a total of 65 stories, contained within three chapters: ‘I’, ‘She’, and ‘All White’. Although it is a novel, each story, under its own subheading and list of white things, boasts a dense completeness in itself.

For ‘I’, there is the story of an ‘older sister’ whom her deceased mother bore at the age of twenty-three, who died two hours after birth. Even after moving to an old city on the other side of the world, I am caught by old memories that keep resurfacing. The story originating from me shifts its gaze to ‘her’. I believe she came here in my place, and through her, I come to encounter the white things of the world anew.

This work, which the author herself describes as entirely her own words, offers a glimpse into all aspects of Han Kang's novels. Within Han Kang's sentences, derived from clinging to the single character ‘white’ and spawning all the ‘white things’ of the world, one encounters the broad and deep narrative that Han Kang has brought forth. Around the time of the novel's publication, Han Kang performed a quiet and slow performance, and in a video produced by Choi Jin-hyuk, she showed acts for the older sister-baby using a language without words. In the hope that this performance would permeate the text, White was re-dressed in new attire and presented to readers anew in 2018.

✨First Korean author to win the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature! Han Kang's *The White Book*

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✨First Korean author to win the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature! Han Kang's The White Book