White Book

From the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian comes a stunning and uncategorisable meditation on the colour white, about light, about death, ritual and the figure in the city.

'A brilliant psychogeography of grief, moving as it does between place, history and memory... The White Book is a mysterious text, perhaps in part a secular prayer book' Deborah Levy, Guardian SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZEFrom 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. But it is also a book about mourning, and of rebirth and the tenacity of the human spirit. It is a stunning investigation of the fragility, beauty and strangeness of life from one of the great literary voices of our time. '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... Han Kang is a genius' Lisa McInerney

Auteur
Han Kang was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Gwangju, South Korea, she moved to Seoul at the age of ten. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University. Her writing has won the Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today's Young Artist Award, and the Korean Literature Novel Award. The Vegetarian, her first novel to be translated into English, *was published by Portobello Books in 2015 and won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. She is also the author of *Human Acts (Portobello, 2016) and The White Book (Portobello, 2017). She is based in Seoul. Deborah Smith grew up in Doncaster. She has translated Korean books by Han Kang, Bae Suah, and Kim Haeja. In 2015 she founded Tilted Axis Press to publish anti-colonial translations from across Asia. She has lived in north India since 2020 and is slowly learning her daughter's mother tongue. She writes on translation, whiteness, class, and sick women.Deborah Smith grew up in Doncaster. She has translated Korean books by Han Kang, Bae Suah, and Kim Haeja. In 2015 she founded Tilted Axis Press to publish anti-colonial translations from across Asia. She has lived in north India since 2020 and is slowly learning her daughter's mother tongue. She writes on translation, whiteness, class, and sick women.

Texte du rabat
Following her Man Booker International Prize triumph with "The Vegetarian", Han Kang returns with a meditation on colour (beginning with a list of white things), mourning, rebirth and human determination shot through with a sense of the strangeness of life.