The White Book - Novels

Solitude, silence, and courage. These are what this book breathed into me like air.

In the spring of 2018, author Han Kang's novel 'The White Book' is reintroduced. Two years earlier in May, the novel first appeared in the world, wrapped in layers of light, and now it is being given new attire. This transformation stems from a desire to weave the author's performance, carried out at the time of the book's release, into the text itself. Her quiet, slow performances, captured in a video produced by artist Choi Jin-hyuk, display her acts for her sister-baby in a 'language without words.'

And so, the novel 'The White Book' by Han Kang is met again—a book woven carefully, with sweat counted like stitches. Could we have ever delved into the ins and outs of all 'white things' born from the single character 'white,' had it not been for this moment? As I stare at the character 'white,' something like a sticky sorrow wells up, much like the scorched rice water that overflows from its pronunciation and form. 'White'—a world so strange and delicate that I can neither claim to know nor not know it. The narrative Han Kang draws from this world is astonishingly wide and deep. Her reflections, pulled up with her unique, sensitive touch, are sharp as ice and hot as freshly ground bone powder. Han Kang’s novel 'The White Book,' pressed firmly into the blank page, speaks of all things white. It is a story of something white, something that can never be stained and will never be tainted.

• TITLE : The White Book
• AUTHOR : HAN KANG
• PUBLISHER : 문학동네
• LANGUAGE : Korean
• COUNTRY OF ORIGIN : South Korea
• PUBLICATION DATE : 2018-04-25
• ISBN13 : 9788954651134
• ISBN10 : 8954651135
• PAGE : 196p