The White Book
A Novel
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4.1 • 33 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
“[Han Kang writes in] intense poetic prose that . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—from the Nobel Prize citation
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE • A “formally daring, emotionally devastating, and deeply political” (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of personal grief through the prism of the color white, from the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian
“Stunningly beautiful. . . one of the smartest reflections on what it means to remember those we’ve lost.”—NPR
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Far from a traditional novel in its presentation, the engrossing latest from Man Booker International winner Han (The Vegetarian) fills spare pages with sometimes poetic meditations on the possibilities of a life unlived. After traveling to Warsaw from South Korea and renting an apartment, Han's unnamed narrator remembers the story of her parents' first child, a girl who died shortly after birth. The narrator investigates her own grief regarding this child to conjure a possible alternate timeline wherein the baby lived. The narrator looks through the eyes of this new person, wandering the foreign city, observing the snowy season developing around her, and using objects like "Sleet," "Salt," and "Sugar cubes" as titles to anchor each section. The narrator crafts an entire life for this lost sister before turning her considerations inward, asking if she would have been conceived if the child had survived. Han breaks her narrative into three parts, "I," "She," and "All Whiteness," and throughout writes with attention to the whiteness of the page. The second section, in particular, is wintery in presentation, with small blocks of black text floating atop swaths of blankness. Though thin on conventional narrative, the novel resonates as a prayer for the departed, and only gains power upon rereading.
Customer Reviews
Never again.
This is my second book by the illustrious award-winning Han Kang. I’m a third of the way through the “book”, which seems simply melancholy journal entries, a bit more poetic claptrap than literature, structured much like Amy Lin’s “Here After”. Calling these books memoirs is over-reach. Their page-count could be reduced by at least half, resulting in “books” that are crazily over-priced. One paragraph pages and chapters are literature, now?
My first reading by Kang was “Greek Lessons”, equally disappointing, certainly the wrong book for me, so months later I decided to try this one—it’s short and I thought that a book about a sister that the author never knew might make for an interesting story. Wrong again. One third of the way through and she’s mentioned that phantom sister 3 times. The rest is sentimental drivel. She’s off my list.