The White Book by Han Kang, Winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature Paperback

Shortlisted for the Man Booker International 2018From the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2016From 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. Review
A brilliant psychogeography of grief, moving as it does between place, history and memory… Poised and never flinches from serene dignity… The White Book is a mysterious text, perhaps in part a secular prayer book… Translated seamlessly by Smith, The White Book succeeds in reflecting Han’s urgent desire to transcend pain with language — Deborah Levy ― Guardian Published On: 2017-11-04

Wonderful. A quietly gripping contemplation on life, death and the existential impact of those who have gone before — Eimear McBride

The White Book is a profound and precious thing, its language achingly intimate, each image haunting and true. It is a remarkable achievement. Han Kang is a genius — Lisa McInerney

There is beauty and pain in every sentence and image, made sharper by their simplicity and aching honesty ― New Internationalist Published On: 2017-11-01

Each [chapter] is a miniature work of art in its own right… there is a crispness to [Han’s] pieces evocative of the stark luminescence of white… This is a book you want to underline and highlight every other line or word as you read, yet every time I went to make my mark, my pencil hovered over the margins – deep as drifts of pillow-white snow – as I remained reticent to taint the perfect whiteness in front of me. The White Book is a shimmering, evocative work. Smith’s peerless translation captures every last tiny nuance, the resultant prose so beautiful and affecting that it stops you in your tracks — Lucy Scholes ― National UAE Published On: 2017-10-30

A fragile work of literature ― Live Mint Published On: 2017-11-17

Delicate and thoughtful and concise and dense and strong; this is the kind of writing I like to read slowly — Jon McGregor ― Guardian Published On: 2017-11-25

An astonishingly rendered work of fiction… Precise, subversive, fierce and deceptively opaque… A sublime expression of grief’s incongruous byways, its busy inactivity, its larger, more elaborate intrusions — Catherine Taylor ― Financial Times Published On: 2017-11-10

[Han] in her new work transgresses literary convention and examines the constellation of pain at the heart of her mother’s first pregnancy… Shot through with pain and paradox […] Kang transforms obliteration into promise. Loss and living are counterpointed, neither meaning revoked — Katherine Waters ― Arts Desk Published On: 2017-11-05

[An] astonishing novel… with such tenderness [that] incites us to examine our own experience and place in the world… It’s a profound piece of work […] that is as much concerned with what is unsaid and omitted, as what is revealed… Han’s painful, exquisite story is a philosophical lament for all the shades of life — Sinead Gleeson ― Irish Times Published On: 2017-11-11

Incantatory… The White Book reveals Han to be an innovative author committed to formal experimentation… Intensely personal, hypnotically serene, and mournfully meditative, Han’s thanatopsis reminds readers of the revivifying power of memory and the extent to which we are uniquely endowed within the natural world to withstand the vagaries of forgetfulness and life’s nagging ephemerality — Brian Haman ― Asian Review of Books Published On: 2017-11-06

An intensely emotional series of accounts that form an outline of losses which are invisible, but still palpably felt — Eric Anderson ― Lonesome Reader Published On: 2017-11-09

Evocative and beautifully laconic, this book is about belonging, grief and the sensory experience of being alive ― Book Riot Published On: 2017-11-07

A brilliant psychogeography — Deborah Levy Published On: 2018-05-28

A tender evocation of grief and absence… Han Kang is a real artist ― Irish Times Published On: 2019-02-16

Formally daring, emotionally devastating and deeply political — Katie Kitamura ― International New York Times Published On: 2019-03-07
Book Description
WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE: shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2018, this is a stunning meditation on the colour white; about light, about death and about ritual.