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We Do Not Part
Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history.
One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama.
A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.
Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.
One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama.
A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.
Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published September 9, 2021
2,781 people are currently reading
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About the author
Han Kang
38books9,164followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the ŷ database.
소설갶 강
Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. She is the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the International Booker Prize, as well as Human Acts, The White Book, Greek Lessons, and We Do Not Part. In 2024, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.�
소설갶 강
Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. She is the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the International Booker Prize, as well as Human Acts, The White Book, Greek Lessons, and We Do Not Part. In 2024, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.�
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,905 reviews
October 13, 2024
I remembered... everyone who's ever suffered similar fates regardless of place...
Hit with bullets.
Hit with cudgels.
Lives severed by blades.
How agonizing it must have been
What Han does in this book is articulate a harrowing story but to express it through a delicately lucid and austere prose. Strikingly, she allows this novel to take on the allusive techniques more usually found in poetry, and shows herself (again) as an exquisite craftsperson of this dense and sophisticated mode of storytelling.
The explicit story is an excavation of the Jeju 4.3 massacre of 1948 in South Korea and the trauma that has ensued on both a personal and national level. The story thematises issues of suffering, intergenerational pain and the unending nature of loss and absence, and attempts towards memorialisation as both a move towards some kind of partial healing as well as acknowledgement of history and the way the past always has a presence in our present.
But what really raises this book in my personal pantheon, is the craft. Han uses metaphors and symbolism to great effect without overloading the text. Snow, birds, trees contain a multiplicity of meanings, some of which also perform as intertexts to Han's other works. Strikingly, they also have shifting values: snow is white and pure and peaceful, even as it is a potential giveaway of a father and daughter's footsteps as they try to find refuge in a cave from the militias seeking their death. It acts as a symbol for the covering over of inconvenient history that governments seek to eradicate from memory; and it figures disappearance as material flakes hit the damp ground and dissolve, representing the absence of family relations and executed bodies thrown into the sea to be swept away. It is especially powerful as a figure for reiteration: the natural cycle of snow-water-mist and the way that reflects humanity's inability to get past violence, war and struggle: 'Who's to say the snow dusting my hands now isn't the same snow that had gathered on their faces?' This sense of haunting, of the intersection of time, is one which permeates the book.
The other system of imagery which worked so well for me is that of bloody fingers: Inseon cuts off her fingertips when working on an art installation as memorialisation piece; in the hospital a nurse has to stick needles into her open wounds in order to keep the nerves alive. But this also recalls moments of torture and also instances of love and desperation: Inseon's mother cut her own fingers to drop warm blood into her dying sister in an attempt to keep her alive, and would prick Inseon's finger with a needle and rub her belly when she had disturbed nightmares. These sorts of dualities of imagery give a gorgeous coherence to the book on a sub-textual level and involve the reader in the hermeneutics of the text.
The title, We Do Not Part in English, is both the title of the art project being contemplated within the story as a monument to the massacre but also refers to the way in which human connections endure: at the heart of the narrative is the friendship of the two women, Kyungha and Inseon, who tell this story as alternate voices with Kyungha as main narrator and Inseon as inserts, but there is also the implication of the lasting remembrance of the executed who do not disappear from personal or collective memories - and the book itself is, on one level an act of artistic recollection and memorialisation. While the immediate concern is with a specific incident in the history of Korea, there is a sense that Han is also thinking more widely of other histories of mass executions, atrocities and, possibly, genocide. Like Sebald, she widens the margins of her story to take a view on humanity's inescapable, apparently, inhumaneness - but does this through a consummate artistry that offers some kind of hope or, at least, doesn't end in complete despair.
I received an ARC of this (thank you, Penguin and Netgalley!) just days before Han was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature and this is a fine book to introduce her to potentially new audiences.
March 3, 2025
I don’t want to box this book in as just a tale about the Jeju Island April 3rd Massacre. If you’re expecting a history lesson packed with facts, you might end up more confused than enlightened. Han Kang’s writing is all about the people - especially women - and it’s drenched in raw emotions. The way she paints the scene using weather, objects, and imagery really grabs you and doesn’t let go.
Instead of fixating on a “massacre of civilians,� it seems Han Kang is more interested in diving into the deep, lasting pain that survivors have had to carry. The book actually blends together 2 separate massacres in Korean history.
Potential Spoilers Ahead
It all kicks off with a dream - black trees, heavy snow, and seawater - that Han Kang actually experienced after finishing her earlier work, Human Acts, about the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. That haunting shadow follows the character Kyungha, who’s tormented by nightmares. Imagine lying in an overheated apartment, sweating through cold showers, drifting in and out of sleep while drowning in relentless, scalding nightmares. That’s how the uprising subtly weaves its way into her life.
As the story shifts into winter, Kyungha gets a call from an old friend, Inseon, who lives on Jeju Island. Inseon, having injured her finger while woodworking and now in a Seoul hospital, urgently needs help to care for her pet white bird, Ama. After battling through heavy snow and nearly impossible roads, Kyungha finally arrives at the wooden house - only to find Ama dead. This journey sets the stage for the first part of the novel, filled with Kyungha’s memories of Inseon, her rebellious past, her small but vivid family tales, and even hints of films about Vietnamese comfort women and the early days of Korean massacres.
The second part shifts into this almost surreal space between life and death. In a cabin buffeted by a blizzard, Inseon - who was supposed to be in a hospital - returns to narrate another horror: the Jeju Island Massacre (1948-1950) alongside the Korean War. 30,000 civilians died in the first year and nearly 300,000 in the second, including Inseon’s own family. These painful memories, pieced together from old newspapers, letters, and her mother Jeongsim’s fragmented recollections, build a raw tapestry of historical grief.
Then comes a brief third part that centers on a promise running throughout the book. Kyungha once mentioned to Inseon that maybe planting those dreamlike black trees and photographing their snow-covered stumps would help banish her nightmares. Inseon, already on that path, shows Kyungha the land set aside for that project. When Kyungha felt like giving up, Inseon reminded her, “But I’ve already started.� Through this long, winding narrative, it becomes clear that Inseon’s quest is really about honoring those who died under brutal, dictatorial oppression.
Looking back after finishing the book, I realized something poignant: Inseon’s desperate call for Kyungha to save the pet was already too late - the bird was dead. Just like trying to undo history, some things can’t be fixed, though at least Kyungha made sure the bird got a proper farewell. Despite years of government silence and denial, the pain of the past still lingers, with families never stopping their search for missing loved ones.
There are some truly gut-wrenching moments in the book. For example, before we even learn that Inseon’s mother was a survivor, she casually mentions keeping a saw under her mattress to fend off nightmares - a detail that later hits you with its deep symbolic pain. Then there’s that disturbing scene where a young mother, in an attempt to help her bleeding sister, bites off her own finger and forces it into her sister’s mouth - a grim image that stays with you. And later, Inseon herself has to endure having her stitched finger pricked every few minutes in the hospital, a painful reminder that sometimes, suffering is just part of being alive.
I believe Han Kang spent over 7 years crafting this book not to lay out a historical account but to capture and preserve the raw, unfiltered pain of the past. The scene where Inseon gets her finger treated struck me the most - it showed a calm, resilient strength in the midst of suffering. It reminded me that while some people might have seemingly peaceful lives, others are battling storms we never see. Life is this quiet sorrow we all endure moment by moment, and in the grand scheme of things, goodbyes and endings don’t change that. The past lingers, unforgotten.
All in all, this is a captivating book with a lasting impact. It makes you feel what it’s like for those who suffer so deeply that even breathing can hurt, yet somehow, they still find the strength to move forward.
5 / 5 stars
Instead of fixating on a “massacre of civilians,� it seems Han Kang is more interested in diving into the deep, lasting pain that survivors have had to carry. The book actually blends together 2 separate massacres in Korean history.
Potential Spoilers Ahead
It all kicks off with a dream - black trees, heavy snow, and seawater - that Han Kang actually experienced after finishing her earlier work, Human Acts, about the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. That haunting shadow follows the character Kyungha, who’s tormented by nightmares. Imagine lying in an overheated apartment, sweating through cold showers, drifting in and out of sleep while drowning in relentless, scalding nightmares. That’s how the uprising subtly weaves its way into her life.
As the story shifts into winter, Kyungha gets a call from an old friend, Inseon, who lives on Jeju Island. Inseon, having injured her finger while woodworking and now in a Seoul hospital, urgently needs help to care for her pet white bird, Ama. After battling through heavy snow and nearly impossible roads, Kyungha finally arrives at the wooden house - only to find Ama dead. This journey sets the stage for the first part of the novel, filled with Kyungha’s memories of Inseon, her rebellious past, her small but vivid family tales, and even hints of films about Vietnamese comfort women and the early days of Korean massacres.
The second part shifts into this almost surreal space between life and death. In a cabin buffeted by a blizzard, Inseon - who was supposed to be in a hospital - returns to narrate another horror: the Jeju Island Massacre (1948-1950) alongside the Korean War. 30,000 civilians died in the first year and nearly 300,000 in the second, including Inseon’s own family. These painful memories, pieced together from old newspapers, letters, and her mother Jeongsim’s fragmented recollections, build a raw tapestry of historical grief.
Then comes a brief third part that centers on a promise running throughout the book. Kyungha once mentioned to Inseon that maybe planting those dreamlike black trees and photographing their snow-covered stumps would help banish her nightmares. Inseon, already on that path, shows Kyungha the land set aside for that project. When Kyungha felt like giving up, Inseon reminded her, “But I’ve already started.� Through this long, winding narrative, it becomes clear that Inseon’s quest is really about honoring those who died under brutal, dictatorial oppression.
Looking back after finishing the book, I realized something poignant: Inseon’s desperate call for Kyungha to save the pet was already too late - the bird was dead. Just like trying to undo history, some things can’t be fixed, though at least Kyungha made sure the bird got a proper farewell. Despite years of government silence and denial, the pain of the past still lingers, with families never stopping their search for missing loved ones.
There are some truly gut-wrenching moments in the book. For example, before we even learn that Inseon’s mother was a survivor, she casually mentions keeping a saw under her mattress to fend off nightmares - a detail that later hits you with its deep symbolic pain. Then there’s that disturbing scene where a young mother, in an attempt to help her bleeding sister, bites off her own finger and forces it into her sister’s mouth - a grim image that stays with you. And later, Inseon herself has to endure having her stitched finger pricked every few minutes in the hospital, a painful reminder that sometimes, suffering is just part of being alive.
I believe Han Kang spent over 7 years crafting this book not to lay out a historical account but to capture and preserve the raw, unfiltered pain of the past. The scene where Inseon gets her finger treated struck me the most - it showed a calm, resilient strength in the midst of suffering. It reminded me that while some people might have seemingly peaceful lives, others are battling storms we never see. Life is this quiet sorrow we all endure moment by moment, and in the grand scheme of things, goodbyes and endings don’t change that. The past lingers, unforgotten.
All in all, this is a captivating book with a lasting impact. It makes you feel what it’s like for those who suffer so deeply that even breathing can hurt, yet somehow, they still find the strength to move forward.
5 / 5 stars
February 15, 2025
han kang hive...it's our time
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
October 3, 2024
Han Kang’s intense, intricate narrative has the feel of a ghost story, forged from unsettling encounters with the spectres of South Korea’s turbulent past. Han opens with an eerie sequence, taken from the dreams that partly inspired her to write this. Author Kyungha � a version of Han � is living in isolation, tormented by debilitating headaches and destabilising nightmares. Recurring nightmares she attributes to the disturbing content of research undertaken for a recent book about the Gwangju uprising � similar to Han’s Human Acts. Macabre fantasies dominate Kyungha’s sleeping and, increasingly, waking thoughts. She’s unable to move freely through surrounding streets, visualising soldiers poised to swoop, intent on capturing her and inflicting searing pain. But Kyungha’s attempts to retreat from the outside world are abruptly curtailed by a summons from old friend, Inseon.
Inseon’s settled in her childhood home on Jeju Island but a serious accident’s brought her to a specialist treatment centre in Seoul. Inseon needs a favour, alone in Jeju is her small bird Ama, likely to die if Kyungha can’t reach her in time. Through blustering winds and a seemingly-incessant snowstorm, Kyungha sets out on a gruelling trek to Inseon’s house. An existential journey leading her away from the desolation of Gwangju towards the traumascape of Inseon’s Jeju. Inseon’s experiences of Jeju are shaped by her mother’s. Jeongsim, Inseon’s mother, survived what’s known as Jeju 4:3 or “Sa-Sam.� But most of her family died and her brother was disappeared.
Jeju 4:3 points to massacres that took place in April, 1948. But the killings weren’t confined to April, Jeju 4:3 encompasses atrocities that stretched back into preceding months and continued in the months ahead. A political uprising sparked by developments involving the governing of South Korea, and the policies of the US administration then overseeing it, was brutally suppressed by a grouping of soldiers, police, and right-wing militias. Ostensibly a hunt for “left-wing� guerrilla units, the underlying goal was to eradicate “leftists.� Around 30,000 people were eventually slaughtered, roughly 10% of Jeju’s population � a place considered overrun by “commie� subversives and sympathisers. During this “scorched earth� campaign whole villages were razed to the ground. No form of terror was considered too extreme, from torture to gang-rape to mass murder - victims included children and new-born babies.
The legacy of Jeju 4:3 dominates the later stages of Han’s narrative. At Inseon’s house, Kyungha’s confronted with distressing documentation compiled by Jeongsim and later added to by Inseon. And Kyungha realises the devastating scenes invading her dreams originated on Jeju. When Kyungha comes face to face with Inseon, still in Seoul yet somehow simultaneously on Jeju, the boundary between real and imagined fractures. Han interweaves surreal episodes featuring Kyungha and Inseon with extracts from the testimonies of Jeju 4:3 survivors � building on existing oral histories. Haunted individuals, they’re tortured by the knowledge that somewhere, in mass graves yet to be discovered, lie the unclaimed bodies of family members from grandfathers to grandmothers, uncles, siblings or cousins.
Although it’s fine as a standalone, Han’s narrative’s shot through with traces of earlier work. Most obviously Kyungha’s writing, and Han’s subject matter, form a bridge to Human Acts; while the symbolic use of trees and plants echoes aspects of The Vegetarian. Snow and snow-related imagery surfaces throughout � so much so it feels a little overworked at times. Han’s use of snow recalls passages from The White Book - as well as untranslated pieces set in snowy landscapes � conjuring notions of mortality and loss. But here, for Han, snow’s also intended to represent “softness and light,� tempering the “darkness� of her meditations on genocide and mass killing.
Although Han’s exploration of these topics stems from Jeju 4:3, she also references the extermination of suspected “reds� on the mainland in Busan and Daegu. But she goes beyond these too, invested in questions of what might drive humans in do barbaric things, and what distinguishes those who do from those who don’t or won’t. She’s equally interested in potential methods for addressing the past: how to heal history’s wounds: the transformation of individual mourning into a collective response possessing active political force; opportunities for solidarity and the co-creation of rituals which open up possibilities for remembrance that goes beyond gesture. Han’s comments about the novel, together with its conclusion, suggest cautious optimism. Unlike Human Acts which steered her towards despair, she found writing this cathartic.
The translation reads smoothly, although there’s not always a marked distinction between sections in Jeju dialect and those in standard Korean, the incorporation of terms of address used on Jeju offers some clues � for instance “abang� for father instead of “abeoji.� The structure and texture of the novel sometimes reminded me of Greek Lessons although it’s more collage-like. Austere, understated prose is interrupted by bursts of arresting lyricism, oneiric sequences are juxtaposed with sharply-focused, docu-style accounts. Although it wasn’t a problem for me, I think the pacing might be an issue for some. The novel took Han several years to complete. The first half initially appeared in serial form in a quarterly magazine, as a result some elements may seem slightly repetitive, excessively detailed, and/or drawn-out compared to the rest of the book. Personally, I found the rhythm of the earlier sections hypnotic. I liked Han’s willingness to experiment, even when I didn’t think it quite paid off. But overall, I found this immensely powerful and incredibly compelling. Translated by e. yaewon & Paige Aniyah Morris.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Hamish Hamilton for the ARC
Inseon’s settled in her childhood home on Jeju Island but a serious accident’s brought her to a specialist treatment centre in Seoul. Inseon needs a favour, alone in Jeju is her small bird Ama, likely to die if Kyungha can’t reach her in time. Through blustering winds and a seemingly-incessant snowstorm, Kyungha sets out on a gruelling trek to Inseon’s house. An existential journey leading her away from the desolation of Gwangju towards the traumascape of Inseon’s Jeju. Inseon’s experiences of Jeju are shaped by her mother’s. Jeongsim, Inseon’s mother, survived what’s known as Jeju 4:3 or “Sa-Sam.� But most of her family died and her brother was disappeared.
Jeju 4:3 points to massacres that took place in April, 1948. But the killings weren’t confined to April, Jeju 4:3 encompasses atrocities that stretched back into preceding months and continued in the months ahead. A political uprising sparked by developments involving the governing of South Korea, and the policies of the US administration then overseeing it, was brutally suppressed by a grouping of soldiers, police, and right-wing militias. Ostensibly a hunt for “left-wing� guerrilla units, the underlying goal was to eradicate “leftists.� Around 30,000 people were eventually slaughtered, roughly 10% of Jeju’s population � a place considered overrun by “commie� subversives and sympathisers. During this “scorched earth� campaign whole villages were razed to the ground. No form of terror was considered too extreme, from torture to gang-rape to mass murder - victims included children and new-born babies.
The legacy of Jeju 4:3 dominates the later stages of Han’s narrative. At Inseon’s house, Kyungha’s confronted with distressing documentation compiled by Jeongsim and later added to by Inseon. And Kyungha realises the devastating scenes invading her dreams originated on Jeju. When Kyungha comes face to face with Inseon, still in Seoul yet somehow simultaneously on Jeju, the boundary between real and imagined fractures. Han interweaves surreal episodes featuring Kyungha and Inseon with extracts from the testimonies of Jeju 4:3 survivors � building on existing oral histories. Haunted individuals, they’re tortured by the knowledge that somewhere, in mass graves yet to be discovered, lie the unclaimed bodies of family members from grandfathers to grandmothers, uncles, siblings or cousins.
Although it’s fine as a standalone, Han’s narrative’s shot through with traces of earlier work. Most obviously Kyungha’s writing, and Han’s subject matter, form a bridge to Human Acts; while the symbolic use of trees and plants echoes aspects of The Vegetarian. Snow and snow-related imagery surfaces throughout � so much so it feels a little overworked at times. Han’s use of snow recalls passages from The White Book - as well as untranslated pieces set in snowy landscapes � conjuring notions of mortality and loss. But here, for Han, snow’s also intended to represent “softness and light,� tempering the “darkness� of her meditations on genocide and mass killing.
Although Han’s exploration of these topics stems from Jeju 4:3, she also references the extermination of suspected “reds� on the mainland in Busan and Daegu. But she goes beyond these too, invested in questions of what might drive humans in do barbaric things, and what distinguishes those who do from those who don’t or won’t. She’s equally interested in potential methods for addressing the past: how to heal history’s wounds: the transformation of individual mourning into a collective response possessing active political force; opportunities for solidarity and the co-creation of rituals which open up possibilities for remembrance that goes beyond gesture. Han’s comments about the novel, together with its conclusion, suggest cautious optimism. Unlike Human Acts which steered her towards despair, she found writing this cathartic.
The translation reads smoothly, although there’s not always a marked distinction between sections in Jeju dialect and those in standard Korean, the incorporation of terms of address used on Jeju offers some clues � for instance “abang� for father instead of “abeoji.� The structure and texture of the novel sometimes reminded me of Greek Lessons although it’s more collage-like. Austere, understated prose is interrupted by bursts of arresting lyricism, oneiric sequences are juxtaposed with sharply-focused, docu-style accounts. Although it wasn’t a problem for me, I think the pacing might be an issue for some. The novel took Han several years to complete. The first half initially appeared in serial form in a quarterly magazine, as a result some elements may seem slightly repetitive, excessively detailed, and/or drawn-out compared to the rest of the book. Personally, I found the rhythm of the earlier sections hypnotic. I liked Han’s willingness to experiment, even when I didn’t think it quite paid off. But overall, I found this immensely powerful and incredibly compelling. Translated by e. yaewon & Paige Aniyah Morris.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Hamish Hamilton for the ARC
February 16, 2025
“Life was exceedingly vulnerable, I realized. The flesh, the organs, bones, breaths passing before my eyes all held within them the potential to snap, to cease � so easily, and by a single decision.�
I can’t think of any better way to describe this book than to say it was haunting. Both the surreal and the disturbing images are right there in front of me still, whether my eyes are open or closed. It’s odd, but as I sit here I realize that I can’t quite picture Kyungha, the narrator, or Inseon, her friend. Yet everything else is so vivid. Perhaps Kyungha and Inseon are a bit otherworldly. Part of a dream. One that the reader finds herself inside of. Kyungha is also unsure of that blurred line between reality and dream, or maybe nightmare would be a better word for it.
“In the sudden lull, I feel as if I’ve opened the door to a dream within a dream and stepped inside.�
“I say quietly, Dreams are terrifying things. No � they’re humiliating. They reveal things about you that you weren’t even aware of…�
After an injury lands her in the hospital, Inseon makes a request of Kyungha. She asks her to travel to her home on the island of Jeju to feed and water her bird, Ama, before it is too late. Kyungha makes her way there amid a snowstorm. At this point, the snow plays a major role in the story, both in a literal and figurative way. The story alternates between the present moment when Kyungha is at Inseon’s home and in the past. A horror that is a deeply disturbing part of Korean history is slowly revealed in a very personal way. The images mix and mingle with the present time. The crimes and injustices of the past are wound tightly with the here and now. They become a part of us, whether we want them to or not.
“Snow had an unreality to it. Was this because of its pace or its beauty? There was an accompanying clarity to snow as well, especially slow, drifting snow. What was and wasn’t important were made distinct. Certain facts became chillingly apparent. Pain, for one.�
We Do Not Part is simultaneously a story of a loving friendship and the chilling aftereffects of the unspeakable acts that humans are capable of doing to one another. Let’s not ignore the fact that these actions happened in recent history. We most certainly are not immune to committing such violence now. As much as it might seem easier to keep one’s head in the sand, we can’t afford to do so. History tells us this repeatedly.
This is my second Han Kang novel and I’ve no doubt she’s well deserving of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her prose soars and her subject matter is relevant, highly compelling and deeply revealing of human nature in its various forms � both the good and the evil. I felt a little less grounded while reading this novel compared to my experience with The Vegetarian. Yet, it’s an important book and one that I can highly recommend.
“How does one endure it?
Without a fire raging in one’s chest.
Without a you to return to and embrace.�
I can’t think of any better way to describe this book than to say it was haunting. Both the surreal and the disturbing images are right there in front of me still, whether my eyes are open or closed. It’s odd, but as I sit here I realize that I can’t quite picture Kyungha, the narrator, or Inseon, her friend. Yet everything else is so vivid. Perhaps Kyungha and Inseon are a bit otherworldly. Part of a dream. One that the reader finds herself inside of. Kyungha is also unsure of that blurred line between reality and dream, or maybe nightmare would be a better word for it.
“In the sudden lull, I feel as if I’ve opened the door to a dream within a dream and stepped inside.�
“I say quietly, Dreams are terrifying things. No � they’re humiliating. They reveal things about you that you weren’t even aware of…�
After an injury lands her in the hospital, Inseon makes a request of Kyungha. She asks her to travel to her home on the island of Jeju to feed and water her bird, Ama, before it is too late. Kyungha makes her way there amid a snowstorm. At this point, the snow plays a major role in the story, both in a literal and figurative way. The story alternates between the present moment when Kyungha is at Inseon’s home and in the past. A horror that is a deeply disturbing part of Korean history is slowly revealed in a very personal way. The images mix and mingle with the present time. The crimes and injustices of the past are wound tightly with the here and now. They become a part of us, whether we want them to or not.
“Snow had an unreality to it. Was this because of its pace or its beauty? There was an accompanying clarity to snow as well, especially slow, drifting snow. What was and wasn’t important were made distinct. Certain facts became chillingly apparent. Pain, for one.�
We Do Not Part is simultaneously a story of a loving friendship and the chilling aftereffects of the unspeakable acts that humans are capable of doing to one another. Let’s not ignore the fact that these actions happened in recent history. We most certainly are not immune to committing such violence now. As much as it might seem easier to keep one’s head in the sand, we can’t afford to do so. History tells us this repeatedly.
This is my second Han Kang novel and I’ve no doubt she’s well deserving of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her prose soars and her subject matter is relevant, highly compelling and deeply revealing of human nature in its various forms � both the good and the evil. I felt a little less grounded while reading this novel compared to my experience with The Vegetarian. Yet, it’s an important book and one that I can highly recommend.
“How does one endure it?
Without a fire raging in one’s chest.
Without a you to return to and embrace.�
December 7, 2024
People say 'light as snow'. But snow has its own heft, which is the weight of this drop of water.
People say 'light as a bird'. But birds too havetheirweight.
눈처� 가볍다� 사람들은 말한�. 그러� 눈에� 무게가 있다, � 물방울만�.
새처� 가볍다고도 말한�. 하지� 그것들에게도 무게가 있다.
Forthcoming in 2025, from the deserving winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.
We Do Not Part (2025) is the translation by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris of 작별하지 않는� by 강 (Han Kang), and a book that epitomises the prose and themes that led the Nobel Committee to choose here as the new Nobel lauraete (see below for their more detailed take).
This novel won the Prix Médicis étranger for its French translation and the English version must be a strong contender for a double-win for Han Kang in the International Booker.
The novel can be thought of as part of a trilogy linked by trauma, and by images of snow, with the powerful 소년� 온다 (2014), translated as Human Acts (2016) by Deborah Smith and the exquisitely poetic � (2016), translated by Smith as The White Book (2017). I also believe this novel was originally going to be a short-story, the third of a a 'Snow Trilogy' with the two short stories, yet to appear in English, � � 송이가 녹는 동안 (2015) ['While A Snowflake Melts'] and 작별 (2018) ['Farewell'], as the narrator of this novel comments:
I'd written a story titled 'Farewell', a story about a woman of snow who melts away under sleet. But that can't be my actual, final farewell.
Han Kang herself has described this book as 지극한 사랑� 대� 소설 - a novel about profound love, and one that followed on from her experience after writing 소년� 온다 (Human Acts) as explained in the autobiographical opening to We Do Not Part.
We Do Not Part is narrated by Kyungha (경하), a novelist, and the initial sections follow the author's own biography. Kyungha, like the author, completed a novel in 2014 based on the massacre that followed the ('오일�' as the events are simply known in Korea, i.e. May 18), in 강's case 소년� 온다 / Human Acts. But far from purging each of visions of violence they were haunted by further dreams:
Having decided to write about mass killings and torture, how could I have so naively - brazenly - hoped to soon shirk off the agony of it, to so easily be bereftofitstraces?
학살� 고문� 대� 쓰기� 마음먹었으면�, 언젠가 고통� 뿌리� � 있을 거라�, 모든 흔적들을 손쉽� 여읠 � 있을 거라�, 어떻� 나는 그토� 순진하게-뻔뻔스럽�-바라� 있었� 것일�?
For both Kyungha, and 강, this took the form of a very specific visual image, which opens the novel:
Sparse snow was falling.
I stood on flat land that edged up a low hill. Along the brow of this hillanddownits visible face to the seam of the plain, thousands of black tree trunks jutted from the earth. They varied in height, like a crowd of people ranging in age, and were about as thick as railway sleepers, though nowhere near as straight. Stooped and listing, they gave the impression of a thousand men, women and haggard children huddling in the snow.
Was this a graveyard? I wondered. Are these gravestones?
I walked past the torsos–treetops lopped off, exposed cross sections stippled with snowflakes that resembled salt crystals; I passed the prostrating barrows behind them. My feet stilled as I noticed the sensation of water underfoot. That’s strange, I thought. Within moments the water was up to my ankles. I looked back. What I saw astonished me: the far horizon turned out to be the shoreline. And the sea was crashing in.
The words tumbled from my lips: Who would bury people insuchaplace?
She realises that this image isn't of Gwangju, and over time it leads her to another infamous massacre earlier in Korea's post World War II history, in the aftermath of the (제주 4·3 사건), with up to 30,000, men, women and children, slaughtered by the US-backed mainland government forces, around 10% of the population, and a similar number fleeing to Japan.
In Korea this story was largely supressed during the military dictatorship, and the first literary treatment was in the 1978 novel by 현기� (Hyun Ki-youn) - Aunt Suni or Sun-i Samch'on in its English translations - which at the time it was published led to censorship and punishment of the author. There is, I think, a neat nod to this work when Kyungha's friend Inseon (인선) explains how to converse with Jeju people:
Inseon had told me to address older people here as samchun. Only outsiders say ajossi or ajumoni, halmoni or haraboji, she said. If you start off by calling them samchun, even if you can't string together a sentence in Jeju-mal, they're likely to be less guarded, thinking you've lived on the island for a good while.
The other key character in the story is Inseon, a colleague from Kyungha's first job, like the author as a reporter at a magazine, over time a close friend, and an artist and film maker.
The novel rather jumps around in time but we learn than Inseon and Kyungha had conceived of an art-project which would be hosted on some land in the mountains of Jeju which Inseon had inherited, where they would replicate Kyungha's vision by planting one hundred black logs to resemble, and remember, those who lost their lives in 1948:
I wanted to ask you–what if we did something about it together? I asked Inseon. What if you and I were to plant logs in a field, dress them in black ink and film them under falling snow?
Well, we’d have to get started before autumn ends, Inseon answered after listening to all I had to say. She was dressed in the black hanbok of mourning, her chin-length hair tied back with a white rubber band and her face earnest and composed. She said to plant ninety-nine logs in a field, we had to be sure the ground wasn’t frozen. She suggested we gather people to help with the planting by mid November at the latest, and said we could use the abandoned tract of land she’d inherited from her father, which no one used. Does the ground freeze here too? I asked. Of course, the uplands are frozen throughout the winter, she said.
An actual memorial in the village of Bukchon, where the events of 숵ӝ삼촌 / Sun-i Samch'on are set.
Crucially Inseon's family home is away from the coast, as during October 1948 the government/mainland authorities decreed: “We impose quarantine on the area further inland than 5km from the coastline of Jeju Island and in the mountainous area from October 20 to the end of military action to sweep the unpatriotic extremists who committed unpardonable atrocities hiding in Mt. Halla�, with those in the interior subject to military action and execution. As explained , "of the 82 mid-mountain villages that existed at the time of Jeju 4·3, 35 had 100 or more residents killed."
But the right time to complete the project never quite comes, and Kyungha decides to abandon it, the two friends drifting apart. However, one December day she receives a simple text message from Inseon that simply reads Kyunghaya (경하�), the 'ya' a suffix used with close acquaintances. Inseon is in a hospital in Seoul, having severed her fingers in an accident in her Jeju studio, and asks Kyungha to visit her urgently.
It transpires that Inseon had been continuing with the project, indeed the accident came while working on the wood. She was rushed to hospital on the mainland for an operation to reattach her fingers, and she is desparate for Kyungha to go, that very day, to Inseon's Jeju home to feed the remaining one of her two pet birds, who she is convinced will not last another day without water and food.
Travelling to Jeju, Kyungha is caught in a snowstorm, which, give the journey involves the airport bus around the island to, what I think is the south-east of the island near to Pyoseon Beach, followed by a local bus inland to the mid-slopes of Hallasan, and then a further trek which would take 30 minutes at the best of times, places her trip in some jeopardy, and indeed during the final leg of the journey she falls down a slope, losing consciousness briefly:
This path I’ve landed on and slipped down by accident, this bed of earth in which I am lying, is most likely the dried-up stream. A thin layer of ice must have set over its channel, a pile of snow heaped up over that. There are hardly any rivers or creeks on this volcanic island, and only occasionally during heavy rains or heavy snow do flowing streams appear. The village used to be divided along the border of this ephemeral stream, Inseon once told me on a walk. A cluster of forty houses, give or take, had stood on the other side, and when the evacuation orders went out in 1948, they were all set on fire, the people in them slaughtered, the villageincinerated.
She eventually recovers (or at least the novel narrates that she does) and finds Inseon's home, only to find that the bird she has come to save has already passed away, and she buries it, with the snow still falling heavily in the garden.
But the next day, when she awakens late in the afternoon, the bird seems to be back - and then she is also visited by Inseon, who she factually knows can not be there as she is still in the hospital. The second half of the novel takes on a dream-like quality as Kyung-ha is led by Inseon through various memories and archives of her family's history and the events in Jeju, which took place when Inseon's mother was 13:
She told me about how, when she was young, soldiers and police had murdered everyone in her village. My mum had been in her last year of elementary school and my aunt was seventeen. The two of them had been away on an errand at a distant cousin’s house, which was how they managed to avoid the same fate. The next day, having heard the news, thesisters returned to the village and wandered the grounds of the elementary school all afternoon. Searching for the bodies of their father and mother, their older brother and eight year old sister. They looked over the bodies that had fallen every which way on top of one another and found that, overnight, a thin layer of snow had covered and frozen upon each face. They couldn’t tell anyone apart because of the snow, and since my aunt couldn’t bring herself to brush it away with her bare hands, she used a handkerchief to wipe each face clean. [...] That day, she came to understand something clearly. That when people died, their bodies went cold. Snow remained on their cheeks, and a thin layer of bloody ice set overtheirfaces.
Inseon's great-uncle was arrested and then lost in the prison system, likely executed at the (경산 코발트광� 학살 사건) although rumours persisted of escapees, and Inseon's mother went on to marry someone who did survive imprisonment. Inseon's mother also led a campaign to discover what happened to those caught up in the events, and her archives, which we explore with Kyungha and Inseon, also speak to events such as the (보도연맹 학살), with Inseon's own films covering other atrocities, including those inflicted by Korean troops in Vietnam.
But at the heart of the story is the profound love which the author highlights of Inseon's mother for her family and between the two friends. And the symbolism of the snow:
The snow that fell over this island and also in other ancient, faraway places could all have condensed together inside those clouds. When, at five years old, I reached out to touch my first snow in G�, and when, at thirty, I was caught in a sudden rain shower that left me drenched as I biked along the riverside in Seoul, when the snow obscured the faces of the hundreds of children, women and elders on the schoolyard here on Jeju seventy years ago, when muddy water flooded the chicken coop as hens and baby chicks flapped their wings and rain ricocheted off the gleaming brass pump � who's to say those raindrops and crumbling snow crystals and thin layers of bloodied ice are not one and the same, that the snow settling over me now isn't that very water?
Another powerful work from an author now recognised, via the Nobel, as one of the world's finest living writers.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC
From the author's Nobel Prize speech
In the notebook I kept while working on that book, I made these notes:
Life seeks to live. Life is warm.
To die is to grow cold. To have snow settle over one’s face rather than melt.
To kill is to make cold.
Humans in history and humans in the cosmos.
The wind and the ocean currents. The circular flow of water and air that connects the
entire world. We are connected. I pray that we are connected.
The novel is made up of three parts. If the first part is a horizontal journey that follows the narrator, Kyungha, from Seoul to her friend Inseon’s home in the Jeju uplands through heavy snow towards the pet bird she has been tasked with saving, then the second part follows a vertical path that leads Kyungha and Inseon down to one of humanity’s darkest nights � to the winter of 1948 when civilians on Jeju were slaughtered � and into the ocean’s depths. In the third and final part, the two light a candle at the bottom of the sea.
Though the novel is pulled forwards by the two friends, just as they take turns holding the candle, its true protagonist and the person linked to both Kyungha and Inseon is Inseon’s mother, Jeongsim. She who, having survived the massacres on Jeju, has fought to recover even a fragment of her loved one’s bones so that she can hold a proper funeral. She who refuses to stop mourning. She who bears pain and stands against oblivion. Who does not bid farewell. In attending to her life, which had for so long seethed with pain and love of an equal density and heat, I think the questions I was asking were these: To what extent can we love? Where is our limit? To what degree must we love in order to remain human to the end?
From the Nobel Committee's bio-bibliography
Another highlight is the late work, 작별하지 않는� (“We Do Not Part�) from 2021, which in terms of its imagery of pain is closely connected to The White Book. The story unfolds in the shadow of a massacre that took place in the late 1940s on South Korea’s Jeju Island, where tens of thousands of people, among them children and the elderly, were shot on suspicion of being collaborators. The book portrays the shared mourning process undertaken by the narrator and her friend Inseon, who both, long after the event, bear with them the trauma associated with the disaster that has befallen their relatives. With imagery that is as precise as it is condensed, Han Kang not only conveys the power of the past over the present, but also, equally powerfully, traces the friends� unyielding attempts to bring to light what has fallen into collective oblivion and transform their trauma into a joint art project, which lends the book its title. As much about the deepest form of friendship as it is about inherited pain, the book moves with great originality between the nightmarish images of the dream and the inclination of witness literature to speak the truth.
People say 'light as a bird'. But birds too havetheirweight.
눈처� 가볍다� 사람들은 말한�. 그러� 눈에� 무게가 있다, � 물방울만�.
새처� 가볍다고도 말한�. 하지� 그것들에게도 무게가 있다.
Forthcoming in 2025, from the deserving winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.
We Do Not Part (2025) is the translation by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris of 작별하지 않는� by 강 (Han Kang), and a book that epitomises the prose and themes that led the Nobel Committee to choose here as the new Nobel lauraete (see below for their more detailed take).
This novel won the Prix Médicis étranger for its French translation and the English version must be a strong contender for a double-win for Han Kang in the International Booker.
The novel can be thought of as part of a trilogy linked by trauma, and by images of snow, with the powerful 소년� 온다 (2014), translated as Human Acts (2016) by Deborah Smith and the exquisitely poetic � (2016), translated by Smith as The White Book (2017). I also believe this novel was originally going to be a short-story, the third of a a 'Snow Trilogy' with the two short stories, yet to appear in English, � � 송이가 녹는 동안 (2015) ['While A Snowflake Melts'] and 작별 (2018) ['Farewell'], as the narrator of this novel comments:
I'd written a story titled 'Farewell', a story about a woman of snow who melts away under sleet. But that can't be my actual, final farewell.
Han Kang herself has described this book as 지극한 사랑� 대� 소설 - a novel about profound love, and one that followed on from her experience after writing 소년� 온다 (Human Acts) as explained in the autobiographical opening to We Do Not Part.
We Do Not Part is narrated by Kyungha (경하), a novelist, and the initial sections follow the author's own biography. Kyungha, like the author, completed a novel in 2014 based on the massacre that followed the ('오일�' as the events are simply known in Korea, i.e. May 18), in 강's case 소년� 온다 / Human Acts. But far from purging each of visions of violence they were haunted by further dreams:
Having decided to write about mass killings and torture, how could I have so naively - brazenly - hoped to soon shirk off the agony of it, to so easily be bereftofitstraces?
학살� 고문� 대� 쓰기� 마음먹었으면�, 언젠가 고통� 뿌리� � 있을 거라�, 모든 흔적들을 손쉽� 여읠 � 있을 거라�, 어떻� 나는 그토� 순진하게-뻔뻔스럽�-바라� 있었� 것일�?
For both Kyungha, and 강, this took the form of a very specific visual image, which opens the novel:
Sparse snow was falling.
I stood on flat land that edged up a low hill. Along the brow of this hillanddownits visible face to the seam of the plain, thousands of black tree trunks jutted from the earth. They varied in height, like a crowd of people ranging in age, and were about as thick as railway sleepers, though nowhere near as straight. Stooped and listing, they gave the impression of a thousand men, women and haggard children huddling in the snow.
Was this a graveyard? I wondered. Are these gravestones?
I walked past the torsos–treetops lopped off, exposed cross sections stippled with snowflakes that resembled salt crystals; I passed the prostrating barrows behind them. My feet stilled as I noticed the sensation of water underfoot. That’s strange, I thought. Within moments the water was up to my ankles. I looked back. What I saw astonished me: the far horizon turned out to be the shoreline. And the sea was crashing in.
The words tumbled from my lips: Who would bury people insuchaplace?
She realises that this image isn't of Gwangju, and over time it leads her to another infamous massacre earlier in Korea's post World War II history, in the aftermath of the (제주 4·3 사건), with up to 30,000, men, women and children, slaughtered by the US-backed mainland government forces, around 10% of the population, and a similar number fleeing to Japan.
In Korea this story was largely supressed during the military dictatorship, and the first literary treatment was in the 1978 novel by 현기� (Hyun Ki-youn) - Aunt Suni or Sun-i Samch'on in its English translations - which at the time it was published led to censorship and punishment of the author. There is, I think, a neat nod to this work when Kyungha's friend Inseon (인선) explains how to converse with Jeju people:
Inseon had told me to address older people here as samchun. Only outsiders say ajossi or ajumoni, halmoni or haraboji, she said. If you start off by calling them samchun, even if you can't string together a sentence in Jeju-mal, they're likely to be less guarded, thinking you've lived on the island for a good while.
The other key character in the story is Inseon, a colleague from Kyungha's first job, like the author as a reporter at a magazine, over time a close friend, and an artist and film maker.
The novel rather jumps around in time but we learn than Inseon and Kyungha had conceived of an art-project which would be hosted on some land in the mountains of Jeju which Inseon had inherited, where they would replicate Kyungha's vision by planting one hundred black logs to resemble, and remember, those who lost their lives in 1948:
I wanted to ask you–what if we did something about it together? I asked Inseon. What if you and I were to plant logs in a field, dress them in black ink and film them under falling snow?
Well, we’d have to get started before autumn ends, Inseon answered after listening to all I had to say. She was dressed in the black hanbok of mourning, her chin-length hair tied back with a white rubber band and her face earnest and composed. She said to plant ninety-nine logs in a field, we had to be sure the ground wasn’t frozen. She suggested we gather people to help with the planting by mid November at the latest, and said we could use the abandoned tract of land she’d inherited from her father, which no one used. Does the ground freeze here too? I asked. Of course, the uplands are frozen throughout the winter, she said.
An actual memorial in the village of Bukchon, where the events of 숵ӝ삼촌 / Sun-i Samch'on are set.
Crucially Inseon's family home is away from the coast, as during October 1948 the government/mainland authorities decreed: “We impose quarantine on the area further inland than 5km from the coastline of Jeju Island and in the mountainous area from October 20 to the end of military action to sweep the unpatriotic extremists who committed unpardonable atrocities hiding in Mt. Halla�, with those in the interior subject to military action and execution. As explained , "of the 82 mid-mountain villages that existed at the time of Jeju 4·3, 35 had 100 or more residents killed."
But the right time to complete the project never quite comes, and Kyungha decides to abandon it, the two friends drifting apart. However, one December day she receives a simple text message from Inseon that simply reads Kyunghaya (경하�), the 'ya' a suffix used with close acquaintances. Inseon is in a hospital in Seoul, having severed her fingers in an accident in her Jeju studio, and asks Kyungha to visit her urgently.
It transpires that Inseon had been continuing with the project, indeed the accident came while working on the wood. She was rushed to hospital on the mainland for an operation to reattach her fingers, and she is desparate for Kyungha to go, that very day, to Inseon's Jeju home to feed the remaining one of her two pet birds, who she is convinced will not last another day without water and food.
Travelling to Jeju, Kyungha is caught in a snowstorm, which, give the journey involves the airport bus around the island to, what I think is the south-east of the island near to Pyoseon Beach, followed by a local bus inland to the mid-slopes of Hallasan, and then a further trek which would take 30 minutes at the best of times, places her trip in some jeopardy, and indeed during the final leg of the journey she falls down a slope, losing consciousness briefly:
This path I’ve landed on and slipped down by accident, this bed of earth in which I am lying, is most likely the dried-up stream. A thin layer of ice must have set over its channel, a pile of snow heaped up over that. There are hardly any rivers or creeks on this volcanic island, and only occasionally during heavy rains or heavy snow do flowing streams appear. The village used to be divided along the border of this ephemeral stream, Inseon once told me on a walk. A cluster of forty houses, give or take, had stood on the other side, and when the evacuation orders went out in 1948, they were all set on fire, the people in them slaughtered, the villageincinerated.
She eventually recovers (or at least the novel narrates that she does) and finds Inseon's home, only to find that the bird she has come to save has already passed away, and she buries it, with the snow still falling heavily in the garden.
But the next day, when she awakens late in the afternoon, the bird seems to be back - and then she is also visited by Inseon, who she factually knows can not be there as she is still in the hospital. The second half of the novel takes on a dream-like quality as Kyung-ha is led by Inseon through various memories and archives of her family's history and the events in Jeju, which took place when Inseon's mother was 13:
She told me about how, when she was young, soldiers and police had murdered everyone in her village. My mum had been in her last year of elementary school and my aunt was seventeen. The two of them had been away on an errand at a distant cousin’s house, which was how they managed to avoid the same fate. The next day, having heard the news, thesisters returned to the village and wandered the grounds of the elementary school all afternoon. Searching for the bodies of their father and mother, their older brother and eight year old sister. They looked over the bodies that had fallen every which way on top of one another and found that, overnight, a thin layer of snow had covered and frozen upon each face. They couldn’t tell anyone apart because of the snow, and since my aunt couldn’t bring herself to brush it away with her bare hands, she used a handkerchief to wipe each face clean. [...] That day, she came to understand something clearly. That when people died, their bodies went cold. Snow remained on their cheeks, and a thin layer of bloody ice set overtheirfaces.
Inseon's great-uncle was arrested and then lost in the prison system, likely executed at the (경산 코발트광� 학살 사건) although rumours persisted of escapees, and Inseon's mother went on to marry someone who did survive imprisonment. Inseon's mother also led a campaign to discover what happened to those caught up in the events, and her archives, which we explore with Kyungha and Inseon, also speak to events such as the (보도연맹 학살), with Inseon's own films covering other atrocities, including those inflicted by Korean troops in Vietnam.
But at the heart of the story is the profound love which the author highlights of Inseon's mother for her family and between the two friends. And the symbolism of the snow:
The snow that fell over this island and also in other ancient, faraway places could all have condensed together inside those clouds. When, at five years old, I reached out to touch my first snow in G�, and when, at thirty, I was caught in a sudden rain shower that left me drenched as I biked along the riverside in Seoul, when the snow obscured the faces of the hundreds of children, women and elders on the schoolyard here on Jeju seventy years ago, when muddy water flooded the chicken coop as hens and baby chicks flapped their wings and rain ricocheted off the gleaming brass pump � who's to say those raindrops and crumbling snow crystals and thin layers of bloodied ice are not one and the same, that the snow settling over me now isn't that very water?
Another powerful work from an author now recognised, via the Nobel, as one of the world's finest living writers.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC
From the author's Nobel Prize speech
In the notebook I kept while working on that book, I made these notes:
Life seeks to live. Life is warm.
To die is to grow cold. To have snow settle over one’s face rather than melt.
To kill is to make cold.
Humans in history and humans in the cosmos.
The wind and the ocean currents. The circular flow of water and air that connects the
entire world. We are connected. I pray that we are connected.
The novel is made up of three parts. If the first part is a horizontal journey that follows the narrator, Kyungha, from Seoul to her friend Inseon’s home in the Jeju uplands through heavy snow towards the pet bird she has been tasked with saving, then the second part follows a vertical path that leads Kyungha and Inseon down to one of humanity’s darkest nights � to the winter of 1948 when civilians on Jeju were slaughtered � and into the ocean’s depths. In the third and final part, the two light a candle at the bottom of the sea.
Though the novel is pulled forwards by the two friends, just as they take turns holding the candle, its true protagonist and the person linked to both Kyungha and Inseon is Inseon’s mother, Jeongsim. She who, having survived the massacres on Jeju, has fought to recover even a fragment of her loved one’s bones so that she can hold a proper funeral. She who refuses to stop mourning. She who bears pain and stands against oblivion. Who does not bid farewell. In attending to her life, which had for so long seethed with pain and love of an equal density and heat, I think the questions I was asking were these: To what extent can we love? Where is our limit? To what degree must we love in order to remain human to the end?
From the Nobel Committee's bio-bibliography
Another highlight is the late work, 작별하지 않는� (“We Do Not Part�) from 2021, which in terms of its imagery of pain is closely connected to The White Book. The story unfolds in the shadow of a massacre that took place in the late 1940s on South Korea’s Jeju Island, where tens of thousands of people, among them children and the elderly, were shot on suspicion of being collaborators. The book portrays the shared mourning process undertaken by the narrator and her friend Inseon, who both, long after the event, bear with them the trauma associated with the disaster that has befallen their relatives. With imagery that is as precise as it is condensed, Han Kang not only conveys the power of the past over the present, but also, equally powerfully, traces the friends� unyielding attempts to bring to light what has fallen into collective oblivion and transform their trauma into a joint art project, which lends the book its title. As much about the deepest form of friendship as it is about inherited pain, the book moves with great originality between the nightmarish images of the dream and the inclination of witness literature to speak the truth.
January 17, 2025
[4.5 stars] One could say We Do Not Part is an amalgam of Han Kang’s previous works: the surrealism of The Vegetarian, the examination of traumatic historical events in Human Acts, and the poetic starkness of The White Book. Here she dips into autofiction and shines a light on the atrocities committed on Jeju Island in 1948.
The book begins with a dream. Evoking woodcut prints, the white snow falls on bent and blackened tree stumps evoking the image of human form. The dark sea rolls in, threatening the trees (or are they people?) as Kyungha, our narrator, anxiously watches. She awakens to a sweltering day in Seoul, a sharp contrast in both weather and mood. Her nightmares have haunted her since she began researching a book she published four years prior about an uprising that resulted in countless deaths. But she feels unsure if these dreams are connected to that event, or something else...
Kyungha's longtime friend Inseon texts her asking for help, immediately. She's in a hospital in Seoul after an accidental while woodworking, coincidentally on a project the two had conceived together years ago but never saw to fruition. Inseon asks Kyungha to return to her Jeju Island home to feed her pet bird who was left behind in the wake of Inseon's accident. Kyungha arrives on the island in the midst of a snowstorm that obscures not only her vision but the story's grasp on reality. From there we move into an almost dreamlike state with the characters as past and present unfold together, woven into a tale that attempts to illuminate and reflect on the harsh realities of their nation.
Kang has explored the human body throughout her oeuvre. She seems to have a fixation on how the human form can both bring forth life and quickly snatch it away. The remnants of humans lost to acts of violence permeate this story. But so too do the shallow breaths, the radiant heat from blushed cheeks, the crunch of snow under feet. These vivid images pull the reader along, like stills in a slideshow.
There also seems to be a fascination with recording history, a theme I notice popping up in many novels I've read in the last year or so. From newspaper clippings, documentary films, journal entries, letters, and novels (such as this one), there's an attempt through the characters, and seemingly Kang herself, to put a pin in history in some way. To fix the eye on something we so easily can look away from, or refuse to ever see at all. Many times our narrator forces herself to look, at wounded fingers, unfathomable separations, in the name of remembering.
At one point a character says something about love being an agony. That to love is to make oneself vulnerable: physically, emotionally, spiritually. And yet there seems to be no other option. Humans continually seek out love in all its various forms. Those are on display here: from mother and daughter, to brother and sister, friend to friend. The partings we experience in life don't seem to be as tangible as they feel. Perhaps there's something more threading us together, across time and space, through history and the present, in blood and snow.
The book begins with a dream. Evoking woodcut prints, the white snow falls on bent and blackened tree stumps evoking the image of human form. The dark sea rolls in, threatening the trees (or are they people?) as Kyungha, our narrator, anxiously watches. She awakens to a sweltering day in Seoul, a sharp contrast in both weather and mood. Her nightmares have haunted her since she began researching a book she published four years prior about an uprising that resulted in countless deaths. But she feels unsure if these dreams are connected to that event, or something else...
Kyungha's longtime friend Inseon texts her asking for help, immediately. She's in a hospital in Seoul after an accidental while woodworking, coincidentally on a project the two had conceived together years ago but never saw to fruition. Inseon asks Kyungha to return to her Jeju Island home to feed her pet bird who was left behind in the wake of Inseon's accident. Kyungha arrives on the island in the midst of a snowstorm that obscures not only her vision but the story's grasp on reality. From there we move into an almost dreamlike state with the characters as past and present unfold together, woven into a tale that attempts to illuminate and reflect on the harsh realities of their nation.
Kang has explored the human body throughout her oeuvre. She seems to have a fixation on how the human form can both bring forth life and quickly snatch it away. The remnants of humans lost to acts of violence permeate this story. But so too do the shallow breaths, the radiant heat from blushed cheeks, the crunch of snow under feet. These vivid images pull the reader along, like stills in a slideshow.
There also seems to be a fascination with recording history, a theme I notice popping up in many novels I've read in the last year or so. From newspaper clippings, documentary films, journal entries, letters, and novels (such as this one), there's an attempt through the characters, and seemingly Kang herself, to put a pin in history in some way. To fix the eye on something we so easily can look away from, or refuse to ever see at all. Many times our narrator forces herself to look, at wounded fingers, unfathomable separations, in the name of remembering.
At one point a character says something about love being an agony. That to love is to make oneself vulnerable: physically, emotionally, spiritually. And yet there seems to be no other option. Humans continually seek out love in all its various forms. Those are on display here: from mother and daughter, to brother and sister, friend to friend. The partings we experience in life don't seem to be as tangible as they feel. Perhaps there's something more threading us together, across time and space, through history and the present, in blood and snow.
June 29, 2024
Of beni -bir kez daha- mahvettin Han Kang. Güney Koreli yazar son kitabı Veda Etmiyorum'da tıpkı Çocuk Geliyor'daki gibi ülkesinin karanlık bir dönemine bakıyor, hatta bence bu kitabı Çocuk Geliyor'un üstüne okumalı zira metin, o kitabı yazdığı dönemde yaşadıklarını anlatmasıyla başlıyor.
İnsanı okurken tüketen, içinden canını çeken bu kitapları yazarken Kang ne hale geliyor acaba diye düşünüyordum, sorunun cevabını da alıyoruz bu kitapla. Yaşanmış onca vahşeti, dökülen onca kanı, ölen çocukları, katledilen insanları yazmak için araştırma yapar ve sonra onlardan edebiyat devşirirken sahiden sağlığından feragat ediyor, ruhunun bir kısmını teslim ediyormuş.
Bu kitapta da benzer bir şey yaşanmış olmalı, zira olağanüstü acıklı bir hikaye okuyoruz. Yazar bu kez bizi 1948'e, Jeju ayaklanmasına götürüyor. 14 ila 60 bin kişinin Komünist olmak suçlamasıyla öldürüldüğü bir ayaklanma bu, kitabı okuyana kadar bilmiyordum, öğrenmiş oldum.
Günümüzde başlayan hikaye, anlatıcımızın yakın arkadaşı İnson'un kendi anne ve babasının geçmişini araştırırken memleketi Jeju Adası'nın tarihini kazımaya başlaması ve bizzat kendi ebeveynlerinin bu kanlı katliamdan paylarına düşeni aldıklarını öğrenmesiyle geçmişe uzanıyor. Anlatıcımız, İnson ve onun annesinin, üç kadının gözünden bakıyoruz tarihe ve zamanın dibine, dibine, dibine doğru iniyoruz Han Kang'ın rehberliğinde. Geçmişle bugünü öyle bir birbirine ilmekliyor ki, üzerinden geçen 80 senede olayın dehşetinin bir gram azalmadığını iliklerinde hissediyor insan okurken. İlmeklediği şey sadece geçmişle bugün değil; rüyayla gerçek, hafızayla unutulma, travmayla sevgi. Bir arada var olabilen, birbirini yanlışlamayan aksine mümkün kılan şeyler. Ölü çocukların yerine inadına yaşatılan çocuklar. Zayıf, yenik gözüken insanların sabırlı mücadeleleri. Ne çok, ne çok şey var bu romanda.
Ve tabii kar� Bu romanı kışın karlar altında okumalıydım belki ama Han Kang öyle atmosferik yazıyor ki, nerede, ne koşulda okursanız okuyun içinde bulunduğunuz odaya zaten yağacak o kar, tenimde hissettim resmen o bitmeyen kar tanelerini.
Çok, çok, çok iyi bir roman Veda Etmiyorum. Han Kang da çağımızın en büyük yazarlarından biri bence.
İnsanı okurken tüketen, içinden canını çeken bu kitapları yazarken Kang ne hale geliyor acaba diye düşünüyordum, sorunun cevabını da alıyoruz bu kitapla. Yaşanmış onca vahşeti, dökülen onca kanı, ölen çocukları, katledilen insanları yazmak için araştırma yapar ve sonra onlardan edebiyat devşirirken sahiden sağlığından feragat ediyor, ruhunun bir kısmını teslim ediyormuş.
Bu kitapta da benzer bir şey yaşanmış olmalı, zira olağanüstü acıklı bir hikaye okuyoruz. Yazar bu kez bizi 1948'e, Jeju ayaklanmasına götürüyor. 14 ila 60 bin kişinin Komünist olmak suçlamasıyla öldürüldüğü bir ayaklanma bu, kitabı okuyana kadar bilmiyordum, öğrenmiş oldum.
Günümüzde başlayan hikaye, anlatıcımızın yakın arkadaşı İnson'un kendi anne ve babasının geçmişini araştırırken memleketi Jeju Adası'nın tarihini kazımaya başlaması ve bizzat kendi ebeveynlerinin bu kanlı katliamdan paylarına düşeni aldıklarını öğrenmesiyle geçmişe uzanıyor. Anlatıcımız, İnson ve onun annesinin, üç kadının gözünden bakıyoruz tarihe ve zamanın dibine, dibine, dibine doğru iniyoruz Han Kang'ın rehberliğinde. Geçmişle bugünü öyle bir birbirine ilmekliyor ki, üzerinden geçen 80 senede olayın dehşetinin bir gram azalmadığını iliklerinde hissediyor insan okurken. İlmeklediği şey sadece geçmişle bugün değil; rüyayla gerçek, hafızayla unutulma, travmayla sevgi. Bir arada var olabilen, birbirini yanlışlamayan aksine mümkün kılan şeyler. Ölü çocukların yerine inadına yaşatılan çocuklar. Zayıf, yenik gözüken insanların sabırlı mücadeleleri. Ne çok, ne çok şey var bu romanda.
Ve tabii kar� Bu romanı kışın karlar altında okumalıydım belki ama Han Kang öyle atmosferik yazıyor ki, nerede, ne koşulda okursanız okuyun içinde bulunduğunuz odaya zaten yağacak o kar, tenimde hissettim resmen o bitmeyen kar tanelerini.
Çok, çok, çok iyi bir roman Veda Etmiyorum. Han Kang da çağımızın en büyük yazarlarından biri bence.
February 5, 2025
Han Kang is the master of the sledgehammer blow and this time takes us into Korean history and a massacre on the island of Jeju, where 30.000 people died in the 1940s. Snow is perpetually falling, people are silent and nightmares recur while human lives seem as fragile as bird's hearts
Why is the world so violent and painful?
And yet how can the world be this beautiful?
From the Nobel prize lecture:
An author, seemingly loosely modelled on as writer of , has recurring dreams about graves close to the sea, under barren trees covered by snow. starts of dark and atmospheric, with oppressive heat in Seoul and the aftermath of a divorce. People feel unmoored in the novel, and there is little true connection, with the main character always responsible for arranging breakfast and dinner for her family, even while working and writing a novel. It is an interesting segway into autofiction for the author.
Our main character, Kyungha, visits a documentary maker annex carpenter on Jeju, Inseon, who had an accident with a circle saw. Being pricked every three minutes, day or night, the bloody scenes in the hospital are only a runway to a stark, if poetic portrayal of more horrors. Kyungha travels to Jeju, the scene of a massacre () and a snow storm. Her travels feel both like by , in how hell is seemingly a cold place with ever falling snow, and also reminded me in a sense of by in setting.
The way Han Kang brings the dead to life is incredible. Wrenching scenes of kids of 12 and 16 wiping the snow mixed with blood from faces of corpses to find loved ones, people being executed in groups of ten to empty prisons, a scene where a young girl seems unharmed but is actually pierced through the chin by a bullet; intensely grim exactly because they are not fictitious.
The writing reminds us how desensitised we are for big numbers and headlines in the news, and how impressive how newly minted Nobel Laureate Han Kang manages to make these kind of events personal, claustrophobic and yet also in a sense healing.
Very impressive and probably together with my favourite novel of the author I have read. I can't put it better than the author herself what an ode this is to human resilience and also a charge against what humans can do against each other: ... its true protagonist and the person linked to both Kyungha and Inseon is Inseon’s mother, Jeongsim. She who, having survived the massacres on Jeju, has fought to recover even a fragment of her loved one’s bones so that she can hold a proper funeral. She who refuses to stop mourning. She who bears pain and stands against oblivion. Who does not bid farewell. In attending to her life, which had for so long seethed with pain and love of an equal density and heat, I think the questions I was asking were these: To what extent can we love? Where is our limit? To what degree must we love in order to remain human to the end?
Why is the world so violent and painful?
And yet how can the world be this beautiful?
From the Nobel prize lecture:
An author, seemingly loosely modelled on as writer of , has recurring dreams about graves close to the sea, under barren trees covered by snow. starts of dark and atmospheric, with oppressive heat in Seoul and the aftermath of a divorce. People feel unmoored in the novel, and there is little true connection, with the main character always responsible for arranging breakfast and dinner for her family, even while working and writing a novel. It is an interesting segway into autofiction for the author.
Our main character, Kyungha, visits a documentary maker annex carpenter on Jeju, Inseon, who had an accident with a circle saw. Being pricked every three minutes, day or night, the bloody scenes in the hospital are only a runway to a stark, if poetic portrayal of more horrors. Kyungha travels to Jeju, the scene of a massacre () and a snow storm. Her travels feel both like by , in how hell is seemingly a cold place with ever falling snow, and also reminded me in a sense of by in setting.
The way Han Kang brings the dead to life is incredible. Wrenching scenes of kids of 12 and 16 wiping the snow mixed with blood from faces of corpses to find loved ones, people being executed in groups of ten to empty prisons, a scene where a young girl seems unharmed but is actually pierced through the chin by a bullet; intensely grim exactly because they are not fictitious.
The writing reminds us how desensitised we are for big numbers and headlines in the news, and how impressive how newly minted Nobel Laureate Han Kang manages to make these kind of events personal, claustrophobic and yet also in a sense healing.
Very impressive and probably together with my favourite novel of the author I have read. I can't put it better than the author herself what an ode this is to human resilience and also a charge against what humans can do against each other: ... its true protagonist and the person linked to both Kyungha and Inseon is Inseon’s mother, Jeongsim. She who, having survived the massacres on Jeju, has fought to recover even a fragment of her loved one’s bones so that she can hold a proper funeral. She who refuses to stop mourning. She who bears pain and stands against oblivion. Who does not bid farewell. In attending to her life, which had for so long seethed with pain and love of an equal density and heat, I think the questions I was asking were these: To what extent can we love? Where is our limit? To what degree must we love in order to remain human to the end?
February 2, 2025
Fascinating author. Han Kang writes about the impact of massacres with the same authenticity with which Svetlana Alexievich gathers testimonies about tragedies. There are also other connections with her previous works here. That’s why I would recommend starting the journey into Han Kang’s world somewhere else.
November 22, 2024
‘That is how death avoided me. Like an asteroid thought to be on a collision course avoids Earth by a hair’s breadth, hurtling past at a furious velocity that knows neither regret nor hesitation. I had not reconciled with life, but I had to resume living.�
Update : Sept/Oct 2024
Read the English translation finally, and have to bump this one up to a 5*. I was ready for the text to be somewhat 'simplified' (which to me, would compromise some of its 'beauty'), but the translator(s) was so incredibly sensitive in the handling of the text, and ever so meticulous and careful with the syntax, style and diction. It didn’t feel ‘reduced�; it felt ‘elevated�. It demands future re-readings.
‘It was early November and the tall maple trees were ablaze and glimmering in the sunlight. Beauty—but the wiring inside me that would sense beauty was dead or failing. One morning, the first frost of the season covered the half-frozen earth—Brittle autumn leaves as big as young faces tumbled past me, and the limbs of the suddenly denuded plane trees, as their Korean name of buhzeum—flaking skin—suggests, resembled grey-white flesh stripped raw.�
‘—in the areas where the conifers and subtropical broadleaf trees grew together, the wind created an indescribable harmony as it passed through the branches and leaves, its speed and rhythm varying by the type of tree. Sunlight reflected off the lustrous camellia leaves, whose angles shifted from moment to moment. Vines of maple-leaf mountain yam wound around the cryptomeria trunks and climbed them to distant heights, swaying like swing ropes.�
As I was reading this I was also 'reunited' with a friend that I lost touch with for more/less a couple of years which felt like an eternity considering how close we are. The uncanny lies in the moment I (I meant the plane) 'landed' in the country she was in (a fact I wasn't aware of at the time), she instantly reached out to me even though I've not been responding to her texts. When we finally met up (on a later visit), I said I didn't keep in touch because '(adj.) hurt people (verb) hurt', and I didn't like the idea of being a negative presence in her life. Among other lovely things, she replied with something so tender, 'my love for you is unconditional, you know� (debatably a cliché, but from the right person, it truly hits different). At first I fail to find resonance in Han Kang's portrayal of 'friendship' but the more I read the text, the more things change (or rather, I am the one who is changed).
‘Since that evening, Inseon and I have been friends. We went through all our life milestones together, right up until she moved back to the island—messaging me at odd moments to tell me she was dropping by. Just do one thing for me? Let me in. And when I did, she would bring her arms around my shoulders, along with a rush of cold wind and the smell of cigarettes—It feels as though invisible snowflakes fill the space between us. As though the words we’ve swallowed are being sealed in between their myriad melded arms.�
‘On the black screen, sporadic points of radiance appeared like ghosts and briefly shimmered: flashes emitted by distant ocean creatures. Occasionally these bioluminescent organisms came into full view on camera, only to emerge back into obscurity. The vertical stretch of sea where the points of light gleamed grew increasingly short. The solid opaque expanse that intersected with it grew overwhelmingly vast. After a while I wondered if the dark was all that remained, but then the camera captured the translucent glow of a giant phantom jellyfish amid what looked like.'
Throughout this year, I was unserious-ly reading books about death and alike without even realising that someone hold dear to heart would have to become so unreachable so suddenly. It's strange to phrase it like so, but I recall strolling the city streets hazy-mindedly in the quiet, too-early mornings (a place I've never been to properly except for when 'transiting flights' which counts for nought in terms of being familiar with it) with another friend who I too hold very close to heart. And he said something to me like 'no offence to the people before, but no 'death' would feel as much or mean as much as this one'. I told him my sentiments echoed his.
One day I'm making another (mutual) friend tear up from guilt from having kept an important secret/info from me (even though he was being a perfectly good friend to another by having done so), the next made him laugh madly when he tells me about how someone we knew from back in school was being inappropriate about a certain matter. I (for a lack of a better phrase) 'understood the mission', and was like don't worry I felt it coming and have very recently asked some to sort it/her out. And I wondered if I was being too 'petty'? But he told me I have every right to be 'petty'. But what does it mean to be ‘petty� or over-sensitive? Why are we made to think that being sterile, deliberately ignorant, and the ‘no fucks given� mask is better? Sure I’m being biased and subjective about this, but maybe Han Kang’s ‘novel� already contains those sentiments in the narrative � tucked in the waves of reverberating tones of histories, memories and raw human feelings. But I was blinded to it, not sensitive to it before because I didn’t carry the same heart I have during my earlier readings of the text.
Neither I nor my previously mentioned friends have headbutted a tree so far, so at least none of us has gone full-Heathcliff. Heathcliff is not just a character, but an entire vibe. In the second half of Brönte’s novel, he is truly ‘grief� personified. I don’t think anyone who has a similarly ‘dark� humour can appreciate the magnum opus (or rather just Heathcliff) fully. Another reason her work came to mind was because of how the setting sort of paralleled Han Kang's in terms of isolation, oppression, violence, and among other/more similarities, surely the winter landscapes. said something once along the lines of how some books ‘choose� you at the right time. While I think ‘timing� is a sadistic fuck far too often, I would like to believe Han Kang’s book did somehow chose me (for better or worse; but I think for ‘better� whatever better entails/means) in a similar way that Brönte’s did when I was a clueless child of nine or ten. And in a similar way � I feel Han Kang feels the same way about softly altering her trajectory of life as a writer and as a person.
‘—pine-nut juk—I took my time with the unduly hot bowl of rice porridge—people walked past the window in bodies that looked fragile enough to shatter. Life was exceedingly vulnerable, I realised. The flesh, organs, bones, breaths passing before my eyes all held within them the potential to snap, to cease�.�
‘The twilight pouring into the woods—darkness grew, the more vividly the vents in the wood-burning stove glowed red. I don’t know why he hid his illness from me—Inseon started at the bright holes, as if staring hard enough at those gleaming eyes would make words flow out of the stove like molten iron.
We haven’t parted ways, not yet.�
—ĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔ�
If one can look at a work of literary translation as a transportation of vibes as playfully(?) preached (and also accomplished) by the wonderful Jeremy Tiang (), then I would like for my review to be mostly about vibes (if I can manage that). So I’m starting it all off with this mini playlist below� a little sonic curation to go with my reviews, why not? In any case, reading this has been the most desperate and chaotic way I’ve ever ‘tried� to read a book/novel, so it would only be appropriate to explain my experience of it all with something as closely desperate and chaotic as possible.
Han Kang’s historical fiction (I dislike this term, but will have to settle for the low-hanging fruit for now; you’ll know why I’m not a fan of the term if you like Labatut too) depicts the aftermath/fallout of the Jeju uprising, or rather and simply, the Jeju massacre. About 10% (30,000) of Jeju’s population was killed, and approximately 15% of the survivors left to find refuge in Japan. Without a doubt a difficult thing to write about, and who else better to write it in the most respectful way than Han Kang? After all, she did brilliantly. That was and still is my favourite Han Kang novel/book. It’s either that or this. Han Kang's highly sensitive, meticulous way of composing her work/writing is almost unrivalled (or at least a tough contender).
Not a spoiler per say, but the haunting yet silent, cold ‘image� of the sawed off fingers of one of the characters � saturated the entire ‘mood� of the novel for me. To me it didn’t feel like it was just being introduced early/used as something to increase ‘shock value�, but I think there is more to it than that. It was so carefully and cleverly done. I thought it suitable to bring that one up because I thought it one of the highest forms of literary ‘art� ever crafted. That, juxtaposed with the paragraph about the falling, red camellia petals on snow. Without discounting or disrespecting the beauty of the writing, my personal experience of reading this book, I feel, is almost like walking through an art installation, a living/breathing museum of some kind. This is because it depicts a time in history that I have no connection to, and only know of vaguely. When I think of Jeju, this is definitely not what comes to mind. In fact, (other than it being a go-to 'travel destination', and the legendary women divers) I would actually be reminded of my least distant memory linked to the word and place itself. And that was a very mundane scene of (having just shared a Jeju-grown (allegedly) orange with my mother, and then being vaguely orange-scented entering a shop to quickly buy something) almost bumping into a wavy-haired child in there screaming ‘I hate you� (in Korean) repeatedly at a man who is probably his dad; and then the dad and I made meaningless, exhausted eye contact before we went opposite directions and went on with our lives. It all just reminds me of the importance of context; and how each one of us are essentially weavers of our collective memory � interconnected, interwoven, everlasting ‘fabric� of life.
Surely not a book I’ll read only once. For one, the obvious reason � a brilliant piece of literature, but then also because one of my favourite translators (Emily Yae Won, ) has already gone and translated this particular Han Kang book into English. The publication date is some time in the next year I believe? Call it a lack of patience if you will, but I had to read this. I started with the original Korean text but Han Kang is especially difficult to read (in my opinion, with my deficient familiarity with the Korean language, because for a lack of a better phrase, her writing is akin to something like poetic prose which is something I would adore and appreciate fully in my ‘dominant� language that is English (for better or worse, it just is)). I got the one in Chinese translation because I thought the cover was especially gorgeous. But mostly I read it in French, which should have been my first option anyway if I had been sensible about it. But evidently chaos and desperation dominated my reading experience.
The French translation is by no means a subpar one. It’s so brilliantly done that it ended up being the finalist for the Prix Femina Etranger 2023; and the winner for the Prix Médicis Etranger 2023. The core of the novel, the way I read it/think of it, is an advocate to go against ‘forgetting�. To not stand with the erasure of history (but essentially memory both personal and collective). Because to conveniently/comfortably lean on that and to act on that would be an act of violence (the second act of violence to the first act of violence if there is already one to begin with). Can’t remember which writer had said this, but the ones who remember more hurt more (and I’m sure there are many other variations of this said by others). But Han Kang heads on in stronger and illuminates the fact that actually the one who forgets more is the one who hurts others more. The one who is alright with ‘forgetting� is essentially the one who is more tolerant of violence, therefore being the one who sustains the continuance of violence upon others. Nothing to do with amnesia or Alzheimer’s here, but that should go without saying, but common sense is not so common, or however the cliché goes!
Han Kang always makes the focal point of her writing the complexities and beauty of human relationships no matter what it is she writes about or around. Surely someone else must have made the connection, and I’m not the first one indulging in this revelation, but there is something Sebaldian about Han Kang’s writing. I’m thinking of (which I did like, but forgot to catalogue/review, read some time last year) in particular. The emotional and mental fallout of a traumatic event, essentially. So with that lingering thought in mind, I Google-ed ‘Han Kang Sebald�, and was led to an article by The Guardian, written by Han Kang, about the � unsurprisingly, she calls Sebald a writer ‘who changed her mind� (on what I do not know, perhaps simply in a generally transformative way) � and she also considers ‘The Emigrants� in particular to be the one she ‘cherish(es)� (most of all?). The entire article, I thought to be a thought-provoking and interesting disclosure of her personal thoughts and ‘journey� as a reader as well as a writer.
If she’s not the most read one, then Han Kang is surely one of the more often read (South Korean) writers in the Anglosphere (I may have even read somewhere that she’s more popular or at least read more ‘abroad�, or rather ‘in translation� than she is in South Korea), but just imagine how enticing her books will be to fans of Sebald? I do not mean this in a derogatory way (because I, too, am a fan of Sebald). If anything, I only feel a strange and isolated excitement in relation to that. I hope any reader who adores Sebald will give Han Kang a read if they haven’t already done it. More likely than not that they will appreciate (and even find resonance in) Han Kang’s work the way I did. But I do specifically mean this one in particular, and also ‘Human Acts� (this, in hindsight, I believe I have under-rated, and should give it another read; I have heard from friends that it is also significantly more ‘profound� and ‘nuanced� in its original, Korean text (but ultimately one can argue that this has to do with an individual preference/taste of literary translation style), but alas I am not so incline towards such acts of biblio-masochism � to read an entire untranslated Han Kang novel).
And lastly, what strikes me as interesting is how the title of the book is translated slightly differently in every language it has been and will be translated into (which isn’t anything too extraordinary, but it interests me nonetheless). In English, I believe it has been decided, and will be titled, ‘We Do Not Part�. In Swedish, (to my own understanding) ‘I Do Not Say Goodbye�. In Chinese, (again my own ‘direct� understanding of it), �(To) Forever Not Bid Farewell�. In French, of course, is ‘Impossible Goodbyes�, which I feel is the most beautiful translation out of all (and the English one being my least favourite of all � bit too colloquial to grab a reader’s attention I would think).
The core ‘note(s)� of the book (at least the way I read/understand it) is to highlight the importance of the preservation of ‘memories� of violent histories caused by humans upon humans, such as in this case, mass-killings/ a massacre. Some would argue that through this, we would all (as human beings) ‘learn� and refrain from repetition. But evidently, even as I read the book/write my thoughts about it at this moment in time (in different parts of the world) war, massacres and genocides persist. Surely, it makes one think. And perhaps thinking, or rather the persistence of ‘human thoughts� are those that keep our humanity intact/alive. And this spills over to the ‘philosophies� of AI (progression/future) in relation to ‘consciousness� � about how essentially human ‘imagination� is the most ‘human� thing about being a human.
Not clever enough to go any deeper into that, but I’m reading by Chen Qiu Fan (who also goes by Stanley Chen) on the side � and all of that is being touched on/explored brilliantly. Without going on a full-blown tangent here, what I am essentially trying to say is that it is all relevant and related. Not a lack of ‘conscience� (a vague concept that varies slightly/drastically from one person to another) but (more importantly) a lack of ‘consciousness� is what makes room/a fertile bed for violence (and ultimately poses the largest risk to ‘humanity� especially when including matters such as climate issues as well). And the abundance of evidence makes it all hard to deny. There is also an underlying whiff of ‘Tao� (which again I am not clever to go further into but can recommend Ken Liu’s translation of the text, ). It is a difficult text (at least for me), but luckily there is no shortage of options when it comes to the text in ‘translation�. I may be wrong (could’ve easily been another writer) but I am quite sure in one interview, Chen has mentioned that one of the translated texts resonates with him more than the original text (although ‘Chinese� is his ‘dominant� language) which I thought was really interesting (bringing it back to the first line of this review, Tiang’s view on literary translation � being largely about ‘vibes� � which is also applicable here). And perhaps if we assume the interchangeability of the word ‘resonate� with ‘vibes� here, then it just means that instead of reading in a single, straightforward manner, to ‘vibe� with a piece of text would be to read with one’s entire being. And that is not unlike my experience of Han Kang’s narrative (her historically-leaning ones at least).
March 8, 2025
It is, of course, stupid to say this of someone who writes in a language you cannot read other than in translation, and a language so linguistically distant from your own, but this woman writes the most beautiful prose. As others have said, it is almost poetic. And yet, always simple, always heartbreakingly honest, always confronting.
This is a stunning novel � and while I would dearly love to provide you with all of the spoilers I can think of, I’m not going to do that. Other than to say that she smashes together the universal and the particular in ways that take your breath away. The universal being the extermination of ‘reds�, or rather ‘could be reds�, and the obligations of friendship. If this was all this book was, it would still be a masterpiece � but it is this and so much more. There are images in this that will haunt you long after you have finished it. To me, her hiding the blood stains � and the hiding of presumed reds � is beyond clever, poignant to the point of nearly stopping you from reading on. Masterful.
One of the things I find so utterly fascinating about her writing � and this has been true of the three books I’ve now read of hers � is how remarkably tactile they are. From the agony of dismemberment to the touch of a bird’s talons upon your finger � I can’t think of another writer who makes me feel so much while I am reading them. And I guess I mean feel in all senses � but literally feel the touch of another is what I actually meant to say. This heightened tactile sense is everywhere. Honestly, you would think the books were written by a blind person.
There are images in this � particularly of snow � that are deeply moving. And then, what you might take to be a simple description suddenly becomes a remarkable metaphor and then transforms into a major theme of the novel itself. Like I said, this is just masterful writing.
For years now, ever since I went to see Pina Bausch’s Carnations, I’ve been a bit obsessed with the idea of repetition. Repetition is never a repeating of the same � or rather, even when it is, it never means the same across its repetitions. This book ‘draws together all of the threads� it is composed of, not least in its images. You could spend a year unpacking these and that would be a year well spent.
Just gorgeous. Yeah, sorry, you’re probably going to have to read this one. I don’t want to spoil it for you � but this is as much a book about ghosts as it is about the living. It is also about the obligations we have for things we didn’t intend � or rather that we warned others not to do, but when they are damaged by those things we had put into their heads, we retain a responsibility, despite our having warned them not to do what they subsequently did. I know, that is too vague and too smart � but I hope you’ll understand what I mean once you have read the book. We do not part � none of us ultimately part.
This is a stunning novel � and while I would dearly love to provide you with all of the spoilers I can think of, I’m not going to do that. Other than to say that she smashes together the universal and the particular in ways that take your breath away. The universal being the extermination of ‘reds�, or rather ‘could be reds�, and the obligations of friendship. If this was all this book was, it would still be a masterpiece � but it is this and so much more. There are images in this that will haunt you long after you have finished it. To me, her hiding the blood stains � and the hiding of presumed reds � is beyond clever, poignant to the point of nearly stopping you from reading on. Masterful.
One of the things I find so utterly fascinating about her writing � and this has been true of the three books I’ve now read of hers � is how remarkably tactile they are. From the agony of dismemberment to the touch of a bird’s talons upon your finger � I can’t think of another writer who makes me feel so much while I am reading them. And I guess I mean feel in all senses � but literally feel the touch of another is what I actually meant to say. This heightened tactile sense is everywhere. Honestly, you would think the books were written by a blind person.
There are images in this � particularly of snow � that are deeply moving. And then, what you might take to be a simple description suddenly becomes a remarkable metaphor and then transforms into a major theme of the novel itself. Like I said, this is just masterful writing.
For years now, ever since I went to see Pina Bausch’s Carnations, I’ve been a bit obsessed with the idea of repetition. Repetition is never a repeating of the same � or rather, even when it is, it never means the same across its repetitions. This book ‘draws together all of the threads� it is composed of, not least in its images. You could spend a year unpacking these and that would be a year well spent.
Just gorgeous. Yeah, sorry, you’re probably going to have to read this one. I don’t want to spoil it for you � but this is as much a book about ghosts as it is about the living. It is also about the obligations we have for things we didn’t intend � or rather that we warned others not to do, but when they are damaged by those things we had put into their heads, we retain a responsibility, despite our having warned them not to do what they subsequently did. I know, that is too vague and too smart � but I hope you’ll understand what I mean once you have read the book. We do not part � none of us ultimately part.
November 1, 2024
Here is another one of Han Kang's books that inspires a passionate review and recommendation, but leaves me gripped with mournful introspection.
We Do Not Part is an ode to friendship, sisterhood, motherhood, and the circular remembrances that connect us to both suffering and survival. The book is divided into three parts, detailing (on the surface) the story of a troubled young woman who travels to Jeju Island to save her injured friend's beloved pet bird, and ends up unpacking the gruesome circumstances of the . Han Kang is well-versed in recounting tragedies and massacres that are forgotten by history (at least outside Korea) in beautiful, poetic, evocative prose. Her writing goes beyond evocative to hypnotic in this work, with the veil between reality and dreams drawn back in an experimental narrative that could have become nonsensical quickly but ended up poignant as it tied together all the threads of the story. Ultimately, the story pierced through my heart, and I know this is one I would go beyond recommending to others. I know I will reread this someday and try to divine meaning through its superbly translated text again.
4.5/5 stars rounded up. A compelling read, repetitive at times, hard-hitting at times. I might like this better than Human Acts, and both can be read as companion novels. No wonder these novels resulted in a Nobel for the author.
Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for a copy of the ARC in exchange for an honest review! We Do Not Part is being published in the US on Jan 21, 2025.
We Do Not Part is an ode to friendship, sisterhood, motherhood, and the circular remembrances that connect us to both suffering and survival. The book is divided into three parts, detailing (on the surface) the story of a troubled young woman who travels to Jeju Island to save her injured friend's beloved pet bird, and ends up unpacking the gruesome circumstances of the . Han Kang is well-versed in recounting tragedies and massacres that are forgotten by history (at least outside Korea) in beautiful, poetic, evocative prose. Her writing goes beyond evocative to hypnotic in this work, with the veil between reality and dreams drawn back in an experimental narrative that could have become nonsensical quickly but ended up poignant as it tied together all the threads of the story. Ultimately, the story pierced through my heart, and I know this is one I would go beyond recommending to others. I know I will reread this someday and try to divine meaning through its superbly translated text again.
4.5/5 stars rounded up. A compelling read, repetitive at times, hard-hitting at times. I might like this better than Human Acts, and both can be read as companion novels. No wonder these novels resulted in a Nobel for the author.
Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for a copy of the ARC in exchange for an honest review! We Do Not Part is being published in the US on Jan 21, 2025.
March 2, 2025
4�
“Stooped and listing, they gave the impression of a thousand men, women and haggard children huddling in the snow.
Was this a graveyard? I wondered. Are these gravestones?�
This is part of Kyungha’s dream, which is based on a dream the author had that inspired this book. The entire opening segment is almost exactly how the author recounted her dream in an NPR interview.
In the story, Kyungha says she dreamed this not long after her book about a massacre was published. She is suffering in sweltering summer heat with broken air conditioning, and when she finally sleeps, she’s dreaming snowy scenes that she thinks might be from her future. She sees the tide encroaching on the ‘gravestones� and sites of bones that will be washed away.
Awake, she is so hot that she considers ending her life.
�The previous summer, as my private life began to crumble like a sugar cube dropped in water, back when the real partings that were to follow were only a premonition, I’d written a story titled ‘Fɱ�, a story about a woman of snow who melts away under sleet. But that can’t be my actual, final farewell.�
She falls asleep on the floor only to dream so strongly of snow and the ‘graves� that she knows she can’t give up � she has to do something about them.
Summer ends, and Kyungha is surprised by a text message from her close friend, Inseon, saying only her name: ‘KܲԲ�. When she texts back, asking if everything is all right, she receives only: ‘Can you come right away?�
Inseon is a filmmaker with a focus on women and war, and the two young women have been planning to do a project together one day, making logs into standing “torsos� representing those who were massacred during WWII.
Inseon is now in a Seoul hospital, requiring urgent, continued care, and she presses Kyungha to please please please go to the little village on the island of Jeju where Inseon lives to save her last adored bird and stay in the house until Inseon is released.
The book opens with unbearable heat and moves to an almost unbelievable cold, all with an eerie, moody, haunting quality. There are dreamlike sequences that seem real to Kyungha.
In her NPR interview, Han Kang explains why there was such focus on snow.
“Snow; It falls between the sky and the earth and connecting the both. And it falls between the living and the dead, between light and darkness, between silence and memories. And I thought of the connection, the circular flow of water and air. We are all connected over this earth so I had this image of the snow. I wanted the snow to fall from beginning to end and I wanted even my characters to enter into that dream of snow.�
There is a lot of history � of which I admit I am ignorant. There are stories of horrifying massacres, people hiding in caves in the hills, the sorts of awful stories I’m more familiar with from Europe during WWII.
Her writing is absolutely compelling. I haven’t read any of her other work, but I have some idea of why the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to her.
The facts, the history, the descriptions, the dreamlike quality and moodiness are beautifully drawn, well worth five stars. But � and for me it is a big ‘but� - sadly, I was never invested in the characters and their story.
Thanks to #NetGalley and Penguin UK for a copy of #WeDoNotPart for review.
The NPR interview the author:
p.s. ŷ friend Barb has posted a terrific review with illustrations which really help describe the mood and feeling of the story.
/review/show...
“Stooped and listing, they gave the impression of a thousand men, women and haggard children huddling in the snow.
Was this a graveyard? I wondered. Are these gravestones?�
This is part of Kyungha’s dream, which is based on a dream the author had that inspired this book. The entire opening segment is almost exactly how the author recounted her dream in an NPR interview.
In the story, Kyungha says she dreamed this not long after her book about a massacre was published. She is suffering in sweltering summer heat with broken air conditioning, and when she finally sleeps, she’s dreaming snowy scenes that she thinks might be from her future. She sees the tide encroaching on the ‘gravestones� and sites of bones that will be washed away.
Awake, she is so hot that she considers ending her life.
�The previous summer, as my private life began to crumble like a sugar cube dropped in water, back when the real partings that were to follow were only a premonition, I’d written a story titled ‘Fɱ�, a story about a woman of snow who melts away under sleet. But that can’t be my actual, final farewell.�
She falls asleep on the floor only to dream so strongly of snow and the ‘graves� that she knows she can’t give up � she has to do something about them.
Summer ends, and Kyungha is surprised by a text message from her close friend, Inseon, saying only her name: ‘KܲԲ�. When she texts back, asking if everything is all right, she receives only: ‘Can you come right away?�
Inseon is a filmmaker with a focus on women and war, and the two young women have been planning to do a project together one day, making logs into standing “torsos� representing those who were massacred during WWII.
Inseon is now in a Seoul hospital, requiring urgent, continued care, and she presses Kyungha to please please please go to the little village on the island of Jeju where Inseon lives to save her last adored bird and stay in the house until Inseon is released.
The book opens with unbearable heat and moves to an almost unbelievable cold, all with an eerie, moody, haunting quality. There are dreamlike sequences that seem real to Kyungha.
In her NPR interview, Han Kang explains why there was such focus on snow.
“Snow; It falls between the sky and the earth and connecting the both. And it falls between the living and the dead, between light and darkness, between silence and memories. And I thought of the connection, the circular flow of water and air. We are all connected over this earth so I had this image of the snow. I wanted the snow to fall from beginning to end and I wanted even my characters to enter into that dream of snow.�
There is a lot of history � of which I admit I am ignorant. There are stories of horrifying massacres, people hiding in caves in the hills, the sorts of awful stories I’m more familiar with from Europe during WWII.
Her writing is absolutely compelling. I haven’t read any of her other work, but I have some idea of why the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to her.
The facts, the history, the descriptions, the dreamlike quality and moodiness are beautifully drawn, well worth five stars. But � and for me it is a big ‘but� - sadly, I was never invested in the characters and their story.
Thanks to #NetGalley and Penguin UK for a copy of #WeDoNotPart for review.
The NPR interview the author:
p.s. ŷ friend Barb has posted a terrific review with illustrations which really help describe the mood and feeling of the story.
/review/show...
November 12, 2024
I took far too long to read Kang’s historical fiction masterpiece, set in South Korea. I started it in September or early October, and fell off the reading cliff into mud. It’s been a rough few months for me, but I was consistently eager to get back each time to Kang’s characters, and to what two friends will do when faced with urgency and disaster.
Han Kang is the latest Nobel Prize writer winner, and you feel the gravitas of this kind of award right at the beginning of the book. And how well-deserved it is. I was riveted from first page to last-- the pile-up of tragedies avoided gratuitous narrative, the attempt to manage memories was front and center, and the successes and failures hard. It’s as if Kang witnessed these events herself, and I felt them viscerally as a reader.
An observer, that’s who Kang and her characters are, even if she and they lived in a different era. Kang animated the buried, breathed oxygen into what was hidden. Her themes about history are to share it. Covering up, erasing dark times is no way to stop it from happening again. She nails it with no platitudes or false sentiment.
I noticed the word “cleave� used a lot in the story, the one word that means two opposing actions. It’s a word I notice when it is present, and Kang had to be purposeful. Check it out each time you read it; it is usually during a high intensity development that it is placed in a sentence.
This author nourishes themes of friendship, of sisterhood love (although the two women aren’t blood related). Crisis stems from injury and subtly tests their relationship. Then it evolves or devolves into an historical nightmare--an epic, tortuous narrative of a time when people died protecting their place in the world. Ordinary heroes, unsung heroes, but also slaughtered victims. The ones who didn’t die were left to tell the story of their ancestor’s tragedies. Oppression, then repression, and, over a half-century later, the buried are revealed.
The two friends, Kyungha and Inseon, tried to find the dead bodies when burial sites are upended during a climate catastrophe. But it’s a rough landscape.
What will people do to their fellow humans? In the name of genocide, a human construct made to extinguish rather than distinguish ourselves. This is the kind of writing that wins me over. I could select any page and find a beautifully written passage.
“What if you and I were to plant logs in a field, dress them in black ink and film them under falling snow?�
All that will make sense as a metaphor to genocide, to harrowing torture in a flux of time. We are in a terrifying era at this moment. When I read about other traumas in history, I try to reach out in some retrospective way. Reading the passionate words of an elegant writer was just the right thing for this moment.
Han Kang is the latest Nobel Prize writer winner, and you feel the gravitas of this kind of award right at the beginning of the book. And how well-deserved it is. I was riveted from first page to last-- the pile-up of tragedies avoided gratuitous narrative, the attempt to manage memories was front and center, and the successes and failures hard. It’s as if Kang witnessed these events herself, and I felt them viscerally as a reader.
An observer, that’s who Kang and her characters are, even if she and they lived in a different era. Kang animated the buried, breathed oxygen into what was hidden. Her themes about history are to share it. Covering up, erasing dark times is no way to stop it from happening again. She nails it with no platitudes or false sentiment.
I noticed the word “cleave� used a lot in the story, the one word that means two opposing actions. It’s a word I notice when it is present, and Kang had to be purposeful. Check it out each time you read it; it is usually during a high intensity development that it is placed in a sentence.
This author nourishes themes of friendship, of sisterhood love (although the two women aren’t blood related). Crisis stems from injury and subtly tests their relationship. Then it evolves or devolves into an historical nightmare--an epic, tortuous narrative of a time when people died protecting their place in the world. Ordinary heroes, unsung heroes, but also slaughtered victims. The ones who didn’t die were left to tell the story of their ancestor’s tragedies. Oppression, then repression, and, over a half-century later, the buried are revealed.
The two friends, Kyungha and Inseon, tried to find the dead bodies when burial sites are upended during a climate catastrophe. But it’s a rough landscape.
What will people do to their fellow humans? In the name of genocide, a human construct made to extinguish rather than distinguish ourselves. This is the kind of writing that wins me over. I could select any page and find a beautifully written passage.
“What if you and I were to plant logs in a field, dress them in black ink and film them under falling snow?�
All that will make sense as a metaphor to genocide, to harrowing torture in a flux of time. We are in a terrifying era at this moment. When I read about other traumas in history, I try to reach out in some retrospective way. Reading the passionate words of an elegant writer was just the right thing for this moment.
February 26, 2025
Este es el tercer libro que leo de Han Kang y también el que menos me ha gustado. Me encanta como escribe esta autora, pero me parece que después de tanto que ha escrito, intentó cambiar su estilo... y hay algo que se pierde ahí, todavía no tengo muy claro lo que es.
July 7, 2024
Devletlerin utançlarının faturasını dünyanın neresinde olursa olsun hep bireyler ödüyor. Üstelik kuşaklar boyu aktarılan bir travmayla. “Şu karanlığı delip geçmek mümkün müdür ki?� Hala her gün tüm dünyanın gözü önünde yapılan işkencelere, kıyımlara şahit olurken ve günün sonunda kaybedenin sadece sivil halk olduğunu bile bile yaşamaya nasıl devam eder insan? Han Kang’ın çabasını bu anlamda çok kıymetli buluyorum. Her kitabı bir tokat, her kitabı ayrı bir saygı duruşu. Ne yazsa kalbimden vuruyor zaten istisnasız.
Şimdilerde bir tatil adası olarak bilinen Jeju Adası’na gidiyoruz bu sefer. Adanın çok değil yetmiş yıl önce büyük bir toplu katliama ev sahipliği yapmış olması ne tuhaf. Tuhaf kelimesi tabii sakil kalıyor yaşananları ve rakamları düşününce. Böyle yazarken yalnızca bir rakamdan ibaret olan kişilerin çoluk çocuk, kadın erkek yaklaşık otuz bin kişi olması da öyle sakil işte. Adanın nüfusunun yüzde onundan bahsediyoruz. Düşünebiliyor musunuz? Suçları komünist olmak. Sanki hiçbir şey olmamış gibi insanları gruplar halinde öldürüp denizde gel gite bırakmışlar, maden oyuklarına itmişler.
“İnsan insana ne yaparsa yapsın artık daha fazla şaşırmayacakmışım gibi gelen bir durum� Kalbimin derinliklerinden bir şeylerin çoktan sökülüp atıldığı, açılan boşluğu ıslatarak çıkan kanın artık kırmızı olmadığı, daha fazla şiddetle fışkırmadığı ve paramparça kesikte ancak teslimiyetin durdurabileceği bir acının titreştiği bir durum�.�
Bu ayıp sonsuza kadar sürebilirmiş gibi diriyken rahat vermedikleri insanların ölülerine de rahat vermemişler. Ada halkının ölülerini anmak için diktiği anıtı 60’larda yıkmışlar, 78’de katliamı anlatan bir romanı yasaklayıp yazarını da hapse atmışlar. Şüphesiz hakkında yazması birçok yönüyle zor bir konu. Fakat bunu bu kadından başka böyle dokunaklı, kimseyi incitmeden tokatlayarak kim anlatabilirdi bilmiyorum. Hem kişisel hem kolektif hafızamıza bir çivi gibi çakıyor tüm satırları. Günlerdir kafamın içinde sayıklamalar halinde dönüp dolanıyor yazdıkları. Bu kadar acı, bunca ahla nasıl dönüyor bu dünya. Tam da benim sık sık kendi kendime kurduğum şu cümleyi kuruyor kitabın bir yerinde: “İnanılmaz olan, güneşin her gün yeniden doğmasıydı.�
En etkilendiğim yanlarından biri de hep olduğu gibi karakterin aklı karıştıka benim de kafamın bulanması, yazarın bir şekilde tüm o acıları okura da hissettiriyor olması. Kitabın ilginç yanlarından biri de tekrar okunmak için adeta okuru çağırması. Bitireli birkaç gün olmasına rağmen elime aldığım her farklı kitapta tekrar beni çağırıyor sanki. Orman aklıma düşüyor, ağaçlar, karakterler, acılar. Kitaptaki ormanın Gyongha’yı çağırması gibi� Han Kang ne yazarsa yazsın insanın karmaşıklıklarını, travmalarını ve yaralarını çok sağlam anlatıyor. Dilerim yaşayanlarının da ölenlerinin de ruhu huzur bulur bu toprakların.
Temmuzun bu çılgın sıcağında sizi sanki karlar altında kalmış gibi üşütecek, zihninizin bir an bile susmasına izin vermeden okuyacağınız bu romanı kaçırmamanızı öneririm.
Şimdilerde bir tatil adası olarak bilinen Jeju Adası’na gidiyoruz bu sefer. Adanın çok değil yetmiş yıl önce büyük bir toplu katliama ev sahipliği yapmış olması ne tuhaf. Tuhaf kelimesi tabii sakil kalıyor yaşananları ve rakamları düşününce. Böyle yazarken yalnızca bir rakamdan ibaret olan kişilerin çoluk çocuk, kadın erkek yaklaşık otuz bin kişi olması da öyle sakil işte. Adanın nüfusunun yüzde onundan bahsediyoruz. Düşünebiliyor musunuz? Suçları komünist olmak. Sanki hiçbir şey olmamış gibi insanları gruplar halinde öldürüp denizde gel gite bırakmışlar, maden oyuklarına itmişler.
“İnsan insana ne yaparsa yapsın artık daha fazla şaşırmayacakmışım gibi gelen bir durum� Kalbimin derinliklerinden bir şeylerin çoktan sökülüp atıldığı, açılan boşluğu ıslatarak çıkan kanın artık kırmızı olmadığı, daha fazla şiddetle fışkırmadığı ve paramparça kesikte ancak teslimiyetin durdurabileceği bir acının titreştiği bir durum�.�
Bu ayıp sonsuza kadar sürebilirmiş gibi diriyken rahat vermedikleri insanların ölülerine de rahat vermemişler. Ada halkının ölülerini anmak için diktiği anıtı 60’larda yıkmışlar, 78’de katliamı anlatan bir romanı yasaklayıp yazarını da hapse atmışlar. Şüphesiz hakkında yazması birçok yönüyle zor bir konu. Fakat bunu bu kadından başka böyle dokunaklı, kimseyi incitmeden tokatlayarak kim anlatabilirdi bilmiyorum. Hem kişisel hem kolektif hafızamıza bir çivi gibi çakıyor tüm satırları. Günlerdir kafamın içinde sayıklamalar halinde dönüp dolanıyor yazdıkları. Bu kadar acı, bunca ahla nasıl dönüyor bu dünya. Tam da benim sık sık kendi kendime kurduğum şu cümleyi kuruyor kitabın bir yerinde: “İnanılmaz olan, güneşin her gün yeniden doğmasıydı.�
En etkilendiğim yanlarından biri de hep olduğu gibi karakterin aklı karıştıka benim de kafamın bulanması, yazarın bir şekilde tüm o acıları okura da hissettiriyor olması. Kitabın ilginç yanlarından biri de tekrar okunmak için adeta okuru çağırması. Bitireli birkaç gün olmasına rağmen elime aldığım her farklı kitapta tekrar beni çağırıyor sanki. Orman aklıma düşüyor, ağaçlar, karakterler, acılar. Kitaptaki ormanın Gyongha’yı çağırması gibi� Han Kang ne yazarsa yazsın insanın karmaşıklıklarını, travmalarını ve yaralarını çok sağlam anlatıyor. Dilerim yaşayanlarının da ölenlerinin de ruhu huzur bulur bu toprakların.
Temmuzun bu çılgın sıcağında sizi sanki karlar altında kalmış gibi üşütecek, zihninizin bir an bile susmasına izin vermeden okuyacağınız bu romanı kaçırmamanızı öneririm.
Read
December 5, 2024105th book of 2024.
One of those books that feels impossible to give an arbitrary rating to. On the one hand, Kang has written an incredibly deft novel about the Jeju Massacre in 1948, on the other, she has written an abstract novel that reads like sand falling through your fingers. Considering the novel's 400 page weight, there's not much to be said about where the pages go: a large swathe of the novel details the narrator waiting at a bus stop in a snowstorm, then walking through the snow, in the attempt to save her friend's budgie. The final hundred pages or so details the dreamlike investigation into her friend's family history and the Jeju Uprising. It is a book full of quiet but poignant images: a budgie hushing as soon as a cover is thrown over its cage, endless snowfall, shadows moving on walls, logs of wood painted black, a bus crawling through the snowstorm, missing fingers... These images all drift, like a snowstorm itself, and carry us through the incredibly weightless narrative. Like the movie in the novel that is planned but never made, the novel reads like an assortment of slides or images, hauntingly quiet, that flicker before your eyes. I can't say I 'liked' the book; I was unnerved by it, sometimes confused by it, but ultimately impressed by Kang's ability to write a novel about this diabolical historical event in a seemingly directionless and airy narrative. What persists in my mind most of all are the black logs standing in the snow, the shadows on the walls and the silencing of a bird.
Thank you to Penguin for the advance copy for review. We Do Not Part is published in English in the UK in February 2025.
One of those books that feels impossible to give an arbitrary rating to. On the one hand, Kang has written an incredibly deft novel about the Jeju Massacre in 1948, on the other, she has written an abstract novel that reads like sand falling through your fingers. Considering the novel's 400 page weight, there's not much to be said about where the pages go: a large swathe of the novel details the narrator waiting at a bus stop in a snowstorm, then walking through the snow, in the attempt to save her friend's budgie. The final hundred pages or so details the dreamlike investigation into her friend's family history and the Jeju Uprising. It is a book full of quiet but poignant images: a budgie hushing as soon as a cover is thrown over its cage, endless snowfall, shadows moving on walls, logs of wood painted black, a bus crawling through the snowstorm, missing fingers... These images all drift, like a snowstorm itself, and carry us through the incredibly weightless narrative. Like the movie in the novel that is planned but never made, the novel reads like an assortment of slides or images, hauntingly quiet, that flicker before your eyes. I can't say I 'liked' the book; I was unnerved by it, sometimes confused by it, but ultimately impressed by Kang's ability to write a novel about this diabolical historical event in a seemingly directionless and airy narrative. What persists in my mind most of all are the black logs standing in the snow, the shadows on the walls and the silencing of a bird.
Thank you to Penguin for the advance copy for review. We Do Not Part is published in English in the UK in February 2025.
Read
January 30, 2025This is my first Han Kang book, and I will mostly remember it for the symbolic snow from start to finish. One of nature's most common features, yet here used so many artful ways. That aspect alone tells you it's a work of literary fiction to be reckoned with. Not easy. Demanding your attention. It jumps between characters, location, time. It brings to life a previously unknown page of history (to me), the massacre of people on the island of Jeju at the hands of the US-backed South Korean government. This in 1948.
In addition to the compellingly gruesome descriptions from history, we get the gentle pages depicting a special friendship between two women collaborating on a project called "We Do Not Part." One of them, Inseon, owns birds, who fly up to meet snowflakes pouring down for a special symbolic place in this book. Han Kang is not afraid of walking a line between dream or delusion and reality, either. At times, we lose the compass of reality and wonder when and why it has been placed back in our hands.
Probably a book worth revisiting some year in that it's sure to give more on subsequent readings. Strange that January is almost gone and this is my first completed book, apparently, but maybe fitting. Some dinners are best appreciated deliberately. One doesn't read this book quickly for entertainment, in other words.
In addition to the compellingly gruesome descriptions from history, we get the gentle pages depicting a special friendship between two women collaborating on a project called "We Do Not Part." One of them, Inseon, owns birds, who fly up to meet snowflakes pouring down for a special symbolic place in this book. Han Kang is not afraid of walking a line between dream or delusion and reality, either. At times, we lose the compass of reality and wonder when and why it has been placed back in our hands.
Probably a book worth revisiting some year in that it's sure to give more on subsequent readings. Strange that January is almost gone and this is my first completed book, apparently, but maybe fitting. Some dinners are best appreciated deliberately. One doesn't read this book quickly for entertainment, in other words.
January 22, 2025
2,5*
Apercebi-me de que a vida era uma coisa extremamente vulnerável. A carne, os órgãos, os ossos, os fôlegos que passavam diante dos meus olhos, tinham todos dentro de si o potencial de se quebrar, de cessar � tão facilmente, e bastando uma única decisão.
“Despedidas Impossíveis� poderia ser o resultado da junção do impressionante “Atos Humanos� e do decepcionante “O Livro Branco�, no entanto, não é tão visceral com o primeiro nem tão etéreo como o segundo e daí a classificação sofrível. Han Kang venceu o Nobel da Literatura de 2024 e, como tal, é a última escritora a precisar do meu elogio e ainda bem, porque não tenho nenhum a fazer-lhe excepto o de me ter tornado uma pessoa mais informada, mas isso qualquer livro de não-ficção o poderia ter competentemente feito sem o embrulhar numa catadupa de comparações. Não é preciso ser-se muito atento para reparar que o único recurso estilístico, o único adorno literário, o único efeito poético que sai da mão da autora sul-coreana é a boa da símile. Isso é sinal de uma grande mestria? Para mim, de modo algum.
Borbotos brancos salpicavam as mangas como se fossem gotas de água. No bolso direito, havia cascas de tangerina que não tinham ainda secado completamente. (�) A luz entrava pela janela, e a neve caía lá fora. Em grandes flocos, como pássaros descendo pelo ar em silêncio.
É verdade que sou uma leitora muito temperamental, que aquilo que é insignificante para a maioria pode ser uma pedra no meu sapato, e este abuso de analogias sem dúvida que me condicionou a experiência, mas não foi a única circunstância. Há outras de que a autora não tem culpa, que se prendem só comigo, mas são os alicerces de “Despedidas Impossíveis�: os sonhos, os fantasmas, a neve. O que é sonho neste livro? Quem está vivo? Qual é o significado simbólico da omnipresente neve? Cada leitor terá a sua interpretação e talvez dependa dela o sucesso deste romance.
Não sei se é isto que acontece antes de morrermos. Tudo o que alguma vez vivi torna-se cristalino. Nada dói já. Centenas, milhares de momentos cintilam em uníssono, como flocos de neve cujas formas elaboradas são inteiramente visíveis. Como isto é possível, não sei. Todas as minhas dores e alegrias, os desgostos e os amores mais profundos, brilham, não como uma amálgama mas num todo constituído por singularidades distintas, cintilando juntas como uma nebulosa gigante.
Kyungha, uma escritora que, à semelhança de Han Kang, publicou um livro sobre o massacre de Gwangju, nunca se conseguiu libertar dos horrores dessa sublevação e encontra-se num extremo estado de fragilidade psicológica que também se manifesta em enxaquecas incapacitantes e pesadelos recorrentes. Quando a sua amiga Inseon, internada devido a um acidente de trabalho, lhe pede que vá a sua casa, na ilha de Jeju, para alimentar o seu adorado periquito, Kyungha tem de percorrer a pé uma zona rural que mal conhece, sob um forte nevão ao anoitecer, a fim de lá chegar a tempo de salvar a ave. É aí que toma conhecimento do trauma geracional de que sofre a família da sua amiga, filha de sobreviventes do massacre de Jeju, que ocorreu entre 1948 e 1954, tendo dizimado cerca de 10% da população da ilha.
Coloquei a mão sobre a fotografia dos ossos. Sobre pessoas que já não tinham olhos nem línguas. Sobre pessoas cujos órgãos e músculos tinham apodrecido. Sobre o que já não era humano � não. Sobre o que mesmo agora permanecia humano.
É curioso que a Coreia do Sul, polida e refulgente como a conhecemos hoje, tenha, como a maioria das nações, um passado tão sangrento e fratricida, e nem me refiro à guerra civil e à divisão do país em dois, mas a tudo o que se passou dentro das suas fronteiras actuais, uma vez mais, vizinhos contra vizinhos. Para perceber o que aconteceu em Jeju é preciso recuar à invasão japonesa (1910-1945) e não esquecer a conivência dos EUA na supressão de tudo o que fossem movimentos de inspiração comunista, mas o que choca de facto não é a ingerência, porque se tornou comum, são os números: 300 aldeias e dezenas de milhares de casas destruídas, 30 mil mortos atirados ao mar, para grutas, para valas comuns.
Viro página após página de fotografias que mostram restos de esqueletos que foram separados e distribuídos por enormes cestos de plástico: milhares de tíbias. Milhares de crânios. Dezenas de milhares de costelas.
Apercebi-me de que a vida era uma coisa extremamente vulnerável. A carne, os órgãos, os ossos, os fôlegos que passavam diante dos meus olhos, tinham todos dentro de si o potencial de se quebrar, de cessar � tão facilmente, e bastando uma única decisão.
“Despedidas Impossíveis� poderia ser o resultado da junção do impressionante “Atos Humanos� e do decepcionante “O Livro Branco�, no entanto, não é tão visceral com o primeiro nem tão etéreo como o segundo e daí a classificação sofrível. Han Kang venceu o Nobel da Literatura de 2024 e, como tal, é a última escritora a precisar do meu elogio e ainda bem, porque não tenho nenhum a fazer-lhe excepto o de me ter tornado uma pessoa mais informada, mas isso qualquer livro de não-ficção o poderia ter competentemente feito sem o embrulhar numa catadupa de comparações. Não é preciso ser-se muito atento para reparar que o único recurso estilístico, o único adorno literário, o único efeito poético que sai da mão da autora sul-coreana é a boa da símile. Isso é sinal de uma grande mestria? Para mim, de modo algum.
Borbotos brancos salpicavam as mangas como se fossem gotas de água. No bolso direito, havia cascas de tangerina que não tinham ainda secado completamente. (�) A luz entrava pela janela, e a neve caía lá fora. Em grandes flocos, como pássaros descendo pelo ar em silêncio.
É verdade que sou uma leitora muito temperamental, que aquilo que é insignificante para a maioria pode ser uma pedra no meu sapato, e este abuso de analogias sem dúvida que me condicionou a experiência, mas não foi a única circunstância. Há outras de que a autora não tem culpa, que se prendem só comigo, mas são os alicerces de “Despedidas Impossíveis�: os sonhos, os fantasmas, a neve. O que é sonho neste livro? Quem está vivo? Qual é o significado simbólico da omnipresente neve? Cada leitor terá a sua interpretação e talvez dependa dela o sucesso deste romance.
Não sei se é isto que acontece antes de morrermos. Tudo o que alguma vez vivi torna-se cristalino. Nada dói já. Centenas, milhares de momentos cintilam em uníssono, como flocos de neve cujas formas elaboradas são inteiramente visíveis. Como isto é possível, não sei. Todas as minhas dores e alegrias, os desgostos e os amores mais profundos, brilham, não como uma amálgama mas num todo constituído por singularidades distintas, cintilando juntas como uma nebulosa gigante.
Kyungha, uma escritora que, à semelhança de Han Kang, publicou um livro sobre o massacre de Gwangju, nunca se conseguiu libertar dos horrores dessa sublevação e encontra-se num extremo estado de fragilidade psicológica que também se manifesta em enxaquecas incapacitantes e pesadelos recorrentes. Quando a sua amiga Inseon, internada devido a um acidente de trabalho, lhe pede que vá a sua casa, na ilha de Jeju, para alimentar o seu adorado periquito, Kyungha tem de percorrer a pé uma zona rural que mal conhece, sob um forte nevão ao anoitecer, a fim de lá chegar a tempo de salvar a ave. É aí que toma conhecimento do trauma geracional de que sofre a família da sua amiga, filha de sobreviventes do massacre de Jeju, que ocorreu entre 1948 e 1954, tendo dizimado cerca de 10% da população da ilha.
Coloquei a mão sobre a fotografia dos ossos. Sobre pessoas que já não tinham olhos nem línguas. Sobre pessoas cujos órgãos e músculos tinham apodrecido. Sobre o que já não era humano � não. Sobre o que mesmo agora permanecia humano.
É curioso que a Coreia do Sul, polida e refulgente como a conhecemos hoje, tenha, como a maioria das nações, um passado tão sangrento e fratricida, e nem me refiro à guerra civil e à divisão do país em dois, mas a tudo o que se passou dentro das suas fronteiras actuais, uma vez mais, vizinhos contra vizinhos. Para perceber o que aconteceu em Jeju é preciso recuar à invasão japonesa (1910-1945) e não esquecer a conivência dos EUA na supressão de tudo o que fossem movimentos de inspiração comunista, mas o que choca de facto não é a ingerência, porque se tornou comum, são os números: 300 aldeias e dezenas de milhares de casas destruídas, 30 mil mortos atirados ao mar, para grutas, para valas comuns.
Viro página após página de fotografias que mostram restos de esqueletos que foram separados e distribuídos por enormes cestos de plástico: milhares de tíbias. Milhares de crânios. Dezenas de milhares de costelas.
January 23, 2025
Nu har hon fått sitt Nobelpris så inte behöver jag slösa med superlativen men jag vill ändå klargöra att för mig är Han Kang i en klass för sig. Jag som på sistone känt mig lite mätt på läsning och litteratur drabbas av ett omedelbart och ganska överväldigande sug när jag börjar i Jag tar inte farväl. Hon skriver poetiskt och vansinnigt vackert, en stillsam prosa, rik på symboler och samtidigt är det våldsamt Jag blir berörd men mest som hypnotiserad, lämnar min egen vardag och landar i Kangs skenvärld som är både drömlik och realistisk i en lycklig balans. När romanen är slut vill jag börja om igen.
Den första delen heter Fåglar och inleds med en beskrivning av ett drömlandskap med tungt fallande snö och planterade stockar. De svartmålade stympade stockarna utan varken rötter eller kronor påminner om några av de tiotusentals människor som dödades i Jeju-massakern 1948. Denna utrensning av vänsteranhängare och barn är något som länge censurerats i Sydkorea. Kanske är det därför Han Kang inte kan låta sin begåvade prosa vara bara behaglig utan hon måste ge efter för det historiska trauma som ärvs eller smittar människor och generationer emellan. I andra delen överlåter protagonisten Gyeongha ordet åt sin vän Inseon vars mamma var med om massakern.
Det är lite oklart vad som händer, vad som är minnen, dröm och verklighet. Det är lite oklart vad fåglar, snö, siffran två, fingrar med mera står för, det är upp till varje läsare att klura på. Trots dessa grumligheter finns det något viktigt här som är glasklart, någon slags essens som tycks nå mina sinnen bortom intellektet. Det är en smärta som nålar i sår, den finns som något naturligt i luften, som snön som kyler och kan vara livshotande om man lägger sig för att vila i den.
”Trots att jag har två tröjor och två kappor på mig känner jag mig frusen. Men det kyliga drag jag upplever verkar inte komma utifrån, det är snarare som att det kommer inifrån.�
Gyeongha blir ombedd av sin hesa vän att rädda vännens fågel. Fåglar som kan prata och sjunga dör i sin bur men lever upp igen precis som berättelser som reglerats av censur får vingar. Fåglar är ord som kan fastna i halsen, de är fjäderlätta men kan också väger tungt. Den här poetiska romanen är ett sätt för Kang att rädda fågeln och släppa den fri. Däri finns hoppet.
Titeln Jag tar inte farväl lär ha lika många betydelser som boken har läsare. Mest tänker jag på alla dem som dödades och inte hade chans att ta farväl av sina nära och kära. Gyeongha filar på sitt avskedsbrev men hennes ensamhet är så stor att hon inte vet vem hon ska ta farväl av.
Jag har fortfarande scener i huvudet från Vegetarianen, de lär få sällskap av några från Jag tar inte farväl. Jag smäller halvt av när jag läser om hur Inseons mamma i demensens slutskede fortfarande delar sin mandarin med sin dotter (som hon inte längre känner igen) och lämnar ifrån sig den största delen. Det är en bild av moderskap som träffar mitt i min prick. En annan beskrivning som träffar mig är hur ön Jejus språk tycks präglat av vinden, de sista ändelserna blåser bort (precis som i min dialekt gotländskan).
Det här är en utmärkt bokcirkelbok, för gotlänningar och andra.
Den första delen heter Fåglar och inleds med en beskrivning av ett drömlandskap med tungt fallande snö och planterade stockar. De svartmålade stympade stockarna utan varken rötter eller kronor påminner om några av de tiotusentals människor som dödades i Jeju-massakern 1948. Denna utrensning av vänsteranhängare och barn är något som länge censurerats i Sydkorea. Kanske är det därför Han Kang inte kan låta sin begåvade prosa vara bara behaglig utan hon måste ge efter för det historiska trauma som ärvs eller smittar människor och generationer emellan. I andra delen överlåter protagonisten Gyeongha ordet åt sin vän Inseon vars mamma var med om massakern.
Det är lite oklart vad som händer, vad som är minnen, dröm och verklighet. Det är lite oklart vad fåglar, snö, siffran två, fingrar med mera står för, det är upp till varje läsare att klura på. Trots dessa grumligheter finns det något viktigt här som är glasklart, någon slags essens som tycks nå mina sinnen bortom intellektet. Det är en smärta som nålar i sår, den finns som något naturligt i luften, som snön som kyler och kan vara livshotande om man lägger sig för att vila i den.
”Trots att jag har två tröjor och två kappor på mig känner jag mig frusen. Men det kyliga drag jag upplever verkar inte komma utifrån, det är snarare som att det kommer inifrån.�
Gyeongha blir ombedd av sin hesa vän att rädda vännens fågel. Fåglar som kan prata och sjunga dör i sin bur men lever upp igen precis som berättelser som reglerats av censur får vingar. Fåglar är ord som kan fastna i halsen, de är fjäderlätta men kan också väger tungt. Den här poetiska romanen är ett sätt för Kang att rädda fågeln och släppa den fri. Däri finns hoppet.
Titeln Jag tar inte farväl lär ha lika många betydelser som boken har läsare. Mest tänker jag på alla dem som dödades och inte hade chans att ta farväl av sina nära och kära. Gyeongha filar på sitt avskedsbrev men hennes ensamhet är så stor att hon inte vet vem hon ska ta farväl av.
Jag har fortfarande scener i huvudet från Vegetarianen, de lär få sällskap av några från Jag tar inte farväl. Jag smäller halvt av när jag läser om hur Inseons mamma i demensens slutskede fortfarande delar sin mandarin med sin dotter (som hon inte längre känner igen) och lämnar ifrån sig den största delen. Det är en bild av moderskap som träffar mitt i min prick. En annan beskrivning som träffar mig är hur ön Jejus språk tycks präglat av vinden, de sista ändelserna blåser bort (precis som i min dialekt gotländskan).
Det här är en utmärkt bokcirkelbok, för gotlänningar och andra.
March 30, 2025
Wow. There is so much to dissect in this book. I'm so grateful it was translated since my abilities in Korean language probably peaked out at a fourth-grade level.
There are multiple government-sanctioned atrocities underpinning the book, both in times of war and "peace," like the abuse of Vietnamese women by Korean soldiers, the kidnapping and repeated and violent rape of Korean women by Japanese soldiers, and the government massacres in Gwangju, Jeju, and Bodo. All of these marks in history involved the forced separation of family and the trauma passed down from generation to generation, along with all the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual ailments that accompanied them. The majority of the book focuses on the Jeju uprising and its subsequent squashing, but in all three cases of government massacre, it was only with the aid, approval, and participation of the US government that they were done. This is a big reason why I tell people that the Korean government is a mere puppet of the US government and that we've long since been politically annexed. (Yes, I'm resentful, even as a US citizen.) The focus of the book on all these atrocities is to emphasize the need for national processing trauma and its reconciliation in order to heal and come to terms with its violent past.
This very important and necessary step is also why I believe the US is in the state that it's in - it's never been held accountable for the genocides, kidnappings, enslavements, and displacements of its own Indigenous and Black peoples. The fact that Jeju is the setting is important in this sense because it has also been the site of historical violence and subjugation of both its indigenous people and its land by Koreans and Japanese, as well as the repression of Jeju language and culture, which is still ongoing by the government and broader culture (e.g., the Indigenous Jeju language is often referred to as unintelligible Korean). By setting the story in Jeju, it's like Kang is trying to bring some truth and reconciliation to its people as well.
There is a known history of the Korean government actively trying to redact its role in these inhumanities, and that's why the documentary filmmaking is so important in the book as well. However, because of the government censorship and the national pain of reliving the trauma, many voices having been forcibly and/or willing silenced, the joint documentary Kyungha and Inseon have been trying to make for years has also been stilted. But through their friendship, the telling and the listening of their personal stories and how they intersect with national history helps bring the truth out into the world in an attempt to undo some of the damage done by years of obfuscation and suppression. It further demonstrates that yes, truth hurts (literally), but that's why the truth will set you free.
Unfortunately, I again see a parallel to the same efforts in the US to suppress the truth of its national acts of shame. MAGA, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and other white supremacist groups have systematically been trying to keep the truth hidden by either erasing history or revisioning history to tell a softer tale (did you know the chapters on slavery in most US classroom history books have been written largely by the Daughters of the Confederacy and that they are the ones perpetuating the lies of the Lost Cause, the "peculiar institution," and the states' rights as the primary reason for the Civil War?). This has been going on since colonial days, and it's now being done more actively and more brazenly than it has in a while as Florida removes Rosa Parks from the history books and banning African American studies from its advanced placement high school history classes, as the records of service and contribution of Black and LGBTQ+ veterans (including military luminary Colin Powell) are deleted, as DE&I programs nationwide are being dismantled, as public schools start teaching from the Bible, etc. The point of Kang's book, though, is that national history/historical memories can never really be snuffed out because the truth shall always prevail. There will always be oral history, family records, and other documentation that will always rise to the surface. As long as there are people who are trying to be silenced, these same people will find a way to manifest their voices in another way.
On the topic of truth, I thought it was really clever of Kang to use duality (which is the closest word I can think of) to question what is truth and what is questioned truth. By this, I'm talking about both Inseon and the bird. Are they really with Kyungha in Inseon's apartment, or are they actually elsewhere? Are they as sick/dead as is implied physically, or is it only corporeal in that intergenerational trauma harms the body? All throughout, the themes of Kyungha's dreams indicate a struggle for her voice to be used (as a stand-in for the national voice that must be rediscovered), and her blurred reality is a demonstration of the fluid nature of truth - how is truth determined and whose truth is the right truth, and whose voice is the one to set the truth?
I have so much more to say about this book, but I think this is enough for now. Of the four books I've read by Kang, this one is the most powerful and the one that makes clear to me why she won the Nobel Prize.
There are multiple government-sanctioned atrocities underpinning the book, both in times of war and "peace," like the abuse of Vietnamese women by Korean soldiers, the kidnapping and repeated and violent rape of Korean women by Japanese soldiers, and the government massacres in Gwangju, Jeju, and Bodo. All of these marks in history involved the forced separation of family and the trauma passed down from generation to generation, along with all the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual ailments that accompanied them. The majority of the book focuses on the Jeju uprising and its subsequent squashing, but in all three cases of government massacre, it was only with the aid, approval, and participation of the US government that they were done. This is a big reason why I tell people that the Korean government is a mere puppet of the US government and that we've long since been politically annexed. (Yes, I'm resentful, even as a US citizen.) The focus of the book on all these atrocities is to emphasize the need for national processing trauma and its reconciliation in order to heal and come to terms with its violent past.
This very important and necessary step is also why I believe the US is in the state that it's in - it's never been held accountable for the genocides, kidnappings, enslavements, and displacements of its own Indigenous and Black peoples. The fact that Jeju is the setting is important in this sense because it has also been the site of historical violence and subjugation of both its indigenous people and its land by Koreans and Japanese, as well as the repression of Jeju language and culture, which is still ongoing by the government and broader culture (e.g., the Indigenous Jeju language is often referred to as unintelligible Korean). By setting the story in Jeju, it's like Kang is trying to bring some truth and reconciliation to its people as well.
There is a known history of the Korean government actively trying to redact its role in these inhumanities, and that's why the documentary filmmaking is so important in the book as well. However, because of the government censorship and the national pain of reliving the trauma, many voices having been forcibly and/or willing silenced, the joint documentary Kyungha and Inseon have been trying to make for years has also been stilted. But through their friendship, the telling and the listening of their personal stories and how they intersect with national history helps bring the truth out into the world in an attempt to undo some of the damage done by years of obfuscation and suppression. It further demonstrates that yes, truth hurts (literally), but that's why the truth will set you free.
Unfortunately, I again see a parallel to the same efforts in the US to suppress the truth of its national acts of shame. MAGA, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and other white supremacist groups have systematically been trying to keep the truth hidden by either erasing history or revisioning history to tell a softer tale (did you know the chapters on slavery in most US classroom history books have been written largely by the Daughters of the Confederacy and that they are the ones perpetuating the lies of the Lost Cause, the "peculiar institution," and the states' rights as the primary reason for the Civil War?). This has been going on since colonial days, and it's now being done more actively and more brazenly than it has in a while as Florida removes Rosa Parks from the history books and banning African American studies from its advanced placement high school history classes, as the records of service and contribution of Black and LGBTQ+ veterans (including military luminary Colin Powell) are deleted, as DE&I programs nationwide are being dismantled, as public schools start teaching from the Bible, etc. The point of Kang's book, though, is that national history/historical memories can never really be snuffed out because the truth shall always prevail. There will always be oral history, family records, and other documentation that will always rise to the surface. As long as there are people who are trying to be silenced, these same people will find a way to manifest their voices in another way.
On the topic of truth, I thought it was really clever of Kang to use duality (which is the closest word I can think of) to question what is truth and what is questioned truth. By this, I'm talking about both Inseon and the bird. Are they really with Kyungha in Inseon's apartment, or are they actually elsewhere? Are they as sick/dead as is implied physically, or is it only corporeal in that intergenerational trauma harms the body? All throughout, the themes of Kyungha's dreams indicate a struggle for her voice to be used (as a stand-in for the national voice that must be rediscovered), and her blurred reality is a demonstration of the fluid nature of truth - how is truth determined and whose truth is the right truth, and whose voice is the one to set the truth?
I have so much more to say about this book, but I think this is enough for now. Of the four books I've read by Kang, this one is the most powerful and the one that makes clear to me why she won the Nobel Prize.
February 20, 2025
As will be obvious from the star rating, this did not work for me. The novel has had much greater success with most readers. I found it just okay.
I have nothing but praise for Kang's decision to grapple with the difficult and important subject matter: wartime violence, genocide, cultural destruction, generational trauma, open-ended family loss. Nor will I criticize a Nobel prize-winner's individual style. However, this application of a hazy, poetic narrative to harrowing themes was enervating rather than stimulating.
Truth be told, I was bored much of the time. And the author herself gives voice to my feelings toward the end of the book:
I don't want to open it... No one can force me to wade through those pages. I am under no obligation to comply. But my trembling hands reach out and open the book. I turn page after page.
Snow. Birds. Trees. Snow. Blood. Birds. Trees. Snow.
2.5 stars
I have nothing but praise for Kang's decision to grapple with the difficult and important subject matter: wartime violence, genocide, cultural destruction, generational trauma, open-ended family loss. Nor will I criticize a Nobel prize-winner's individual style. However, this application of a hazy, poetic narrative to harrowing themes was enervating rather than stimulating.
Truth be told, I was bored much of the time. And the author herself gives voice to my feelings toward the end of the book:
I don't want to open it... No one can force me to wade through those pages. I am under no obligation to comply. But my trembling hands reach out and open the book. I turn page after page.
Snow. Birds. Trees. Snow. Blood. Birds. Trees. Snow.
2.5 stars
Want to read
June 12, 2024Han Kang hive lets goooooo
January 10, 2025
Gyeongha hat lange nichts von ihrer Freundin Inseon gehört, als diese sie zu sich in ein Krankenhaus in Seoul ruft. Inseon bittet Gyeongha darum, sofort zu ihrem Zuhause auf der Insel Jeju zu reisen, um ihren Vogel Ama zu versorgen, der sonst sterben könnte. Gyeongha nimmt den nächsten Flieger - und gerät in einen schweren Schneesturm, der ihr die Anreise fast unmöglich macht. Auf der Insel erwartet sie aber auch die längst verschüttete Familiengeschichte Inseons, die sie zutiefst erschüttert.
In "Unmöglicher Abschied" nähert sich Han Kang, übersetzt von Ki-Hyang Lee, literarisch einem lange verdrängten Kapitel koreanischer Geschichte: Dem Jeju-Aufstand, bei dem es nach der Einsetzung einer rechtsgerichteten Lokalregierung durch die Regierung in Seoul zu Massakern an Teilen der Inselbevölkerung kam. Es starben mindestens 30.000 Menschen. Im Buch ist die Familiengeschichte von Gyeonghas Freundin Inseon eng mit diesem Massaker verwoben, trotzdem bleibt es oft nur bei Andeutungen, beispielsweise der Schilderung von Material, das Inseon für eine Kunstinstallation sichtete. Neben dem wichtigen historischen Hintergrund beschreibt Han Kang zudem eine tiefe, langjährige Freundschaft zwischen zwei Künstlerinnen, die sich trotz räumlicher Distanz nie ganz aus den Augen verloren haben. Auch der Schnee in seinen verschiedenen Ausprägungen spielt eine zentrale Rolle im Buch. "Unmöglicher Abschied" ist kein leicht zu lesender Roman, er lässt viel Interpretationsspielraum, vor allem was Gyeonghas Schicksal betrifft. Auch ist er geprägt von magischem Realismus, was mir nicht so sehr zugesagt hat. Ich hatte am Ende nicht das Gefühl, das Buch vollends erfasst zu haben - das Lesen war aber trotzdem ein Gewinn für mich, da ich mich sonst nie mit dem Jeju-Aufstand auseinander gesetzt hätte.
In "Unmöglicher Abschied" nähert sich Han Kang, übersetzt von Ki-Hyang Lee, literarisch einem lange verdrängten Kapitel koreanischer Geschichte: Dem Jeju-Aufstand, bei dem es nach der Einsetzung einer rechtsgerichteten Lokalregierung durch die Regierung in Seoul zu Massakern an Teilen der Inselbevölkerung kam. Es starben mindestens 30.000 Menschen. Im Buch ist die Familiengeschichte von Gyeonghas Freundin Inseon eng mit diesem Massaker verwoben, trotzdem bleibt es oft nur bei Andeutungen, beispielsweise der Schilderung von Material, das Inseon für eine Kunstinstallation sichtete. Neben dem wichtigen historischen Hintergrund beschreibt Han Kang zudem eine tiefe, langjährige Freundschaft zwischen zwei Künstlerinnen, die sich trotz räumlicher Distanz nie ganz aus den Augen verloren haben. Auch der Schnee in seinen verschiedenen Ausprägungen spielt eine zentrale Rolle im Buch. "Unmöglicher Abschied" ist kein leicht zu lesender Roman, er lässt viel Interpretationsspielraum, vor allem was Gyeonghas Schicksal betrifft. Auch ist er geprägt von magischem Realismus, was mir nicht so sehr zugesagt hat. Ich hatte am Ende nicht das Gefühl, das Buch vollends erfasst zu haben - das Lesen war aber trotzdem ein Gewinn für mich, da ich mich sonst nie mit dem Jeju-Aufstand auseinander gesetzt hätte.
February 27, 2024
Moje pierwsze spotkanie z twórczością Han Kang wspominam jako średnio udane. „Biała elegia� kojarzyła mi się ze zbiorem impresji przesiąkniętych poetyckością, co sprawiło, że jej odbiór opierał się głównie na odczuwanych emocjach, których u mnie niestety zabrakło. W przypadku „Nie mówię żegnaj� widzę sporo podobieństw, jednak tym razem wątek straty i żałoby zostaje rozciągnięty szerzej, gdyż na tapet autorka bierze ludobójstwo na wyspie Czedżu, ubierając tę tragiczną historię w warstwę symboliczną.
Nie chcę tutaj pisać o zarysie fabuły, bo mam wrażenie, że jest ona tylko pretekstem do opowiedzenia o czymś zupełnie innym, a odkrywanie kolejnych wątków opowieści sprawiło mi największą satysfakcję podczas lektury. Równie ważną, a może wręcz najważniejszą częścią powieści jest jej język oraz wykorzystywane przez Han Kang symbole i alegorie. Tutaj zaznaczyć trzeba, że o ile niektóre z nich są oczywiste i łatwe do odszyfrowania, tak niektóre wymagają znajomości kultury oraz wierzeń koreańskich, co może utrudniać odbiór.
Niestety, dla mnie książka okazała się zbyt oniryczna, balansująca na krawędzi jawy i snu, skupiająca się zbyt mocno na symbolach. Już sam początek mnie znużył i odniosłem wrażenie, że gdybym przestał czytać w tamtym momencie, to nie straciłbym zbyt wiele. Zaznaczam jednak, że jest to wyłącznie moja preferencja w stosunku do motywów, za którymi nie przepadam i być może inni czytelnicy są w stanie odkryć coś, czego ja nie dostrzegłem. Poza tym jest to historia o pamięci zbiorowej na temat tragedii, która jątrzy się jak otwarta rana, podrażniana wciąż tak samo, jak nakłuwane są palce jednej z bohaterek. Proces gojenia jest być może trudny i bolesny, jednak konieczny do tego, aby rana się zagoiła.
Nie chcę tutaj pisać o zarysie fabuły, bo mam wrażenie, że jest ona tylko pretekstem do opowiedzenia o czymś zupełnie innym, a odkrywanie kolejnych wątków opowieści sprawiło mi największą satysfakcję podczas lektury. Równie ważną, a może wręcz najważniejszą częścią powieści jest jej język oraz wykorzystywane przez Han Kang symbole i alegorie. Tutaj zaznaczyć trzeba, że o ile niektóre z nich są oczywiste i łatwe do odszyfrowania, tak niektóre wymagają znajomości kultury oraz wierzeń koreańskich, co może utrudniać odbiór.
Niestety, dla mnie książka okazała się zbyt oniryczna, balansująca na krawędzi jawy i snu, skupiająca się zbyt mocno na symbolach. Już sam początek mnie znużył i odniosłem wrażenie, że gdybym przestał czytać w tamtym momencie, to nie straciłbym zbyt wiele. Zaznaczam jednak, że jest to wyłącznie moja preferencja w stosunku do motywów, za którymi nie przepadam i być może inni czytelnicy są w stanie odkryć coś, czego ja nie dostrzegłem. Poza tym jest to historia o pamięci zbiorowej na temat tragedii, która jątrzy się jak otwarta rana, podrażniana wciąż tak samo, jak nakłuwane są palce jednej z bohaterek. Proces gojenia jest być może trudny i bolesny, jednak konieczny do tego, aby rana się zagoiła.
March 16, 2025
Sumida en una profunda depresión, Gyeongha pasa sus días aislada en su apartamento, deseando dejar de existir. Hace años escribió un libro sobre la masacre de Gwangju y esto le dejó terribles secuelas. La investigación sobre el suceso perturbó su percepción del ser humano y los horrores que este es capaz de cometer. Desde entonces tiene una pesadilla recurrente sobre una fila de troncos plantados en la nieve. Inseon, una de sus amigas más íntimas, que vive en un pueblecito de Jeju, la llama un día para pedirle un favor que la llevará a este pueblo, donde descubrirá en profundidad las cicatrices que dejó unas de las matanzas más brutales de la historia de Corea, la que fue perpetrada en la isla de Jeju a mediados del siglo XX tras la ocupación japonesa.
Una de las cosas que más valoro de las historias de Han Kang y, sobre todo, de su forma de contarlas, es que consigue adentrarme en ellas con todo mi ser, de la manera más vulnerable posible. No sé si esto es producto de lo que me hicieron sentir las dos primeras novelas suyas que leí (“La vegetariana� y “Actos humanos�) o es que todas rápidamente me atrapan y sumergen en ese estado de alerta, dispuesto a dejarme arrastrar por todas y cada una de las emociones que la autora quiera transmitirme. Incluso cuando no entiendo todas sus metáforas, ya que existe una brecha cultural muy grande entre ella como autora y yo como lector, que me hace imposible pillarlas todas, sí consiguen transmitirme sensaciones, sentimientos.
Si tuviera que comparar “Imposible decir adiós� con alguna otra de sus obras, tendría que hacerlo con “Actos humanos�, ya que ambas se centran en la naturaleza humana y en como esta siempre parece estar abocada a la violencia, a la barbarie. Si en “Actos humanos� la autora exponía la matanza ocurrida en 1980 en la ciudad de Gwangju y como los militares respaldados por el gobierno acallaron las protestas ciudadanas a tiros, con esta nueva novela la autora se centra en la masacre de la isla de Jeju iniciada en 1948 y que se estima que acabó con la vida de cientos de miles de personas.
Unos de los temas más explorados por Han Kang en su obra es la capacidad del ser humano para dañar a los demás, para cometer las mayores atrocidades, sus personajes tratan de buscar un sentido a semejantes actos, una razón que justifique ese deseo humano de dañar a otros. Sus novelas también tratan sobre el dolor, sobre la imposibilidad de decir adiós no solo a esas personas que ya no están, también al dolor que su ausencia ha dejado. Las cicatrices de estas pérdidas, de estas vivencias se graban a fuego en las personas, y nunca se van. Quizás por esa razón, por representar tan bien lo peor del ser humano, y esas emociones tan universales como son el dolor, la tristeza o la pérdida, me resulta tan absorbente la experiencia de leer un libro de Han Kang. En casos como los de “Actos humanos� o “Imposible decir adiós�, basados en hechos históricos bárbaros y reales, todavía consigue afectarme más.
Probablemente, “Imposible decir adiós� sea de los libros más complejos de Han Kang, porque además de ser tan metafórico como es habitual en la autora, es una historia muy onírica, hasta tal punto que el lector nunca termina de saber cuando son reales los hechos y cuando la protagonista se encuentra en una especie de ensoñación o alucinación. Normalmente me gustan muchos las historias con una carga onírica de este tipo porque permiten situaciones y desarrollos muy interesantes y diferentes, requiriendo del lector la constante atención e interpretación.
Me han parecido muy sugerentes las constantes descripciones que la autora hacía sobre la nieve, y como esta siempre estaba relacionada con la muerte, con el luto, con la pérdida. Gran parte de las vidas que se perdieron durante esta masacre no solo no fueron recuperadas, ya que se ocultaron con la intención de que así fuese, sino que además ni siquiera se sabe cuantas personas realmente fueron asesinadas. La extrema derecha del país quería erradicar cualquier semilla del comunismo, y para ello decidió masacrar y asesinar familias, pueblos enteros. Los directos perpetradores de estos asesinatos incluso eran premiados por ellos, por asesinar a niñas, niños, mujeres y hombres, por torturar y violar, antes de matar, por tratar a las personas como simples objetos, restos de algo sin valor. La nieve, su blancura, su frialdad, su capacidad para ocultar secretos, horrores, cadáveres, se convierte en el centro de la novela.
Un detalle muy interesante que incluye esta historia es que creo que hasta cierto punto la autora habla de ella a través del personaje principal, ya que ambas escribieron un libro sobre la matanza de Gwangju, cosa que provoca que la protagonista se suma en una profunda depresión por esos horrores de los que fue consciente. No sé hasta que punto la autora viviría esa misma desesperación, pero no cuesta mucho imaginarse lo duro que debe ser documentarse para hablar de una historia de este tipo, si ya solo leerla es un acto sumamente duro.
No es la primera vez que leo sobre la masacre de Jeju y siempre consigue sobrecogerme lo que allí sucedió, y como después de tantos años no se ha honrado realmente la memoria de esas personas, y el ocultismo sigue siendo la actitud de quienes mandan. Me ha parecido también muy bonito como utiliza la autora a esas dos cotorritas que vivían con Inseon, una fallece primero, dejando a la otra sola, sirviendo esto de alguna manera como símil entre su madre y la incertidumbre que siempre la acompañó sobre que le pasó a su hermano durante esta convulsa época. También ese escalofrío que da la unión en la muerte.
Sinceramente, "Imposible decir adiós" es espectacular, digna obra de una autora impecable, que siempre consigue estremecerme, pero que nunca es fácil de leer. No lo es porque se sumerge en temas duros desde una perspectiva crítica, y tampoco lo es porque es muy simbólica, y no todos los lectores disfrutan de tener que dar ese nivel de atención a una obra. En mi caso, disfruto de cada palabra, de cada momento, adoro estar indagando en el sentido de una situación u otra, en el sentido de un palabra o de un silencio.
Se me ha grabado a fuego esa escena que Gyeongha quería representar, esos troncos oscuros en esa blanquísima nieve, como si fuesen todas aquellas personas que fueron asesinadas y quedadas en el olvido. Siento que es una manera de honrar su recuerdo, de que sepan que aún alguien sabe que existieron. En fin, otra obra exquisita de Han Kang, de esta gran autora que supe que se convertiría en mi favorita desde la primera vez que la leí, sensación que confirmo con cada historia suya que leo.
Una de las cosas que más valoro de las historias de Han Kang y, sobre todo, de su forma de contarlas, es que consigue adentrarme en ellas con todo mi ser, de la manera más vulnerable posible. No sé si esto es producto de lo que me hicieron sentir las dos primeras novelas suyas que leí (“La vegetariana� y “Actos humanos�) o es que todas rápidamente me atrapan y sumergen en ese estado de alerta, dispuesto a dejarme arrastrar por todas y cada una de las emociones que la autora quiera transmitirme. Incluso cuando no entiendo todas sus metáforas, ya que existe una brecha cultural muy grande entre ella como autora y yo como lector, que me hace imposible pillarlas todas, sí consiguen transmitirme sensaciones, sentimientos.
Si tuviera que comparar “Imposible decir adiós� con alguna otra de sus obras, tendría que hacerlo con “Actos humanos�, ya que ambas se centran en la naturaleza humana y en como esta siempre parece estar abocada a la violencia, a la barbarie. Si en “Actos humanos� la autora exponía la matanza ocurrida en 1980 en la ciudad de Gwangju y como los militares respaldados por el gobierno acallaron las protestas ciudadanas a tiros, con esta nueva novela la autora se centra en la masacre de la isla de Jeju iniciada en 1948 y que se estima que acabó con la vida de cientos de miles de personas.
Unos de los temas más explorados por Han Kang en su obra es la capacidad del ser humano para dañar a los demás, para cometer las mayores atrocidades, sus personajes tratan de buscar un sentido a semejantes actos, una razón que justifique ese deseo humano de dañar a otros. Sus novelas también tratan sobre el dolor, sobre la imposibilidad de decir adiós no solo a esas personas que ya no están, también al dolor que su ausencia ha dejado. Las cicatrices de estas pérdidas, de estas vivencias se graban a fuego en las personas, y nunca se van. Quizás por esa razón, por representar tan bien lo peor del ser humano, y esas emociones tan universales como son el dolor, la tristeza o la pérdida, me resulta tan absorbente la experiencia de leer un libro de Han Kang. En casos como los de “Actos humanos� o “Imposible decir adiós�, basados en hechos históricos bárbaros y reales, todavía consigue afectarme más.
Probablemente, “Imposible decir adiós� sea de los libros más complejos de Han Kang, porque además de ser tan metafórico como es habitual en la autora, es una historia muy onírica, hasta tal punto que el lector nunca termina de saber cuando son reales los hechos y cuando la protagonista se encuentra en una especie de ensoñación o alucinación. Normalmente me gustan muchos las historias con una carga onírica de este tipo porque permiten situaciones y desarrollos muy interesantes y diferentes, requiriendo del lector la constante atención e interpretación.
Me han parecido muy sugerentes las constantes descripciones que la autora hacía sobre la nieve, y como esta siempre estaba relacionada con la muerte, con el luto, con la pérdida. Gran parte de las vidas que se perdieron durante esta masacre no solo no fueron recuperadas, ya que se ocultaron con la intención de que así fuese, sino que además ni siquiera se sabe cuantas personas realmente fueron asesinadas. La extrema derecha del país quería erradicar cualquier semilla del comunismo, y para ello decidió masacrar y asesinar familias, pueblos enteros. Los directos perpetradores de estos asesinatos incluso eran premiados por ellos, por asesinar a niñas, niños, mujeres y hombres, por torturar y violar, antes de matar, por tratar a las personas como simples objetos, restos de algo sin valor. La nieve, su blancura, su frialdad, su capacidad para ocultar secretos, horrores, cadáveres, se convierte en el centro de la novela.
Un detalle muy interesante que incluye esta historia es que creo que hasta cierto punto la autora habla de ella a través del personaje principal, ya que ambas escribieron un libro sobre la matanza de Gwangju, cosa que provoca que la protagonista se suma en una profunda depresión por esos horrores de los que fue consciente. No sé hasta que punto la autora viviría esa misma desesperación, pero no cuesta mucho imaginarse lo duro que debe ser documentarse para hablar de una historia de este tipo, si ya solo leerla es un acto sumamente duro.
No es la primera vez que leo sobre la masacre de Jeju y siempre consigue sobrecogerme lo que allí sucedió, y como después de tantos años no se ha honrado realmente la memoria de esas personas, y el ocultismo sigue siendo la actitud de quienes mandan. Me ha parecido también muy bonito como utiliza la autora a esas dos cotorritas que vivían con Inseon, una fallece primero, dejando a la otra sola, sirviendo esto de alguna manera como símil entre su madre y la incertidumbre que siempre la acompañó sobre que le pasó a su hermano durante esta convulsa época. También ese escalofrío que da la unión en la muerte.
Sinceramente, "Imposible decir adiós" es espectacular, digna obra de una autora impecable, que siempre consigue estremecerme, pero que nunca es fácil de leer. No lo es porque se sumerge en temas duros desde una perspectiva crítica, y tampoco lo es porque es muy simbólica, y no todos los lectores disfrutan de tener que dar ese nivel de atención a una obra. En mi caso, disfruto de cada palabra, de cada momento, adoro estar indagando en el sentido de una situación u otra, en el sentido de un palabra o de un silencio.
Se me ha grabado a fuego esa escena que Gyeongha quería representar, esos troncos oscuros en esa blanquísima nieve, como si fuesen todas aquellas personas que fueron asesinadas y quedadas en el olvido. Siento que es una manera de honrar su recuerdo, de que sepan que aún alguien sabe que existieron. En fin, otra obra exquisita de Han Kang, de esta gran autora que supe que se convertiría en mi favorita desde la primera vez que la leí, sensación que confirmo con cada historia suya que leo.
January 26, 2025
A Han Kang é uma espécie de pugilista que, em vez de punhos, nos acerta com palavras.
January 27, 2025
It's not even the end of January, but 2025 already looks a limp year for fiction. Lucky then, that this new novel from Han Kang shines like a beacon in the gloom.
Dark, haunting, spare and dreamlike, We Do Not Part slowly reveals the horrors that occurred on Jeju Island more than half a century ago, through our narrator and her interactions with ghosts of the past. So stylish and strange, every image suffused with meaning, it's a delicate and disturbing novel of the highest quality.
It's also a novel you're best off knowing little about going in. A great reading experience. Surely a very strong contender for the International Booker Prize.
4.5
Dark, haunting, spare and dreamlike, We Do Not Part slowly reveals the horrors that occurred on Jeju Island more than half a century ago, through our narrator and her interactions with ghosts of the past. So stylish and strange, every image suffused with meaning, it's a delicate and disturbing novel of the highest quality.
It's also a novel you're best off knowing little about going in. A great reading experience. Surely a very strong contender for the International Booker Prize.
4.5
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