About the book
An unnamed narrator's mourning for a baby sister who died two hours after birth runs through Korean novelist Han Kang's fragmented, autobiographical novel. The book begins with a list of white things and builds from short meditations on the color, describing 65 white objects in all, among them salt, snow, rice, sugar cubes, breast milk, swaddling bands and a shroud. Through them it considers grief, loss, rebirth and the fragile, strange nature of life. Han Kang also wrote Human Acts and The Vegetarian, which won the Man Booker International Prize. The White Book itself was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, and Deborah Smith translated it into English.
Alina Varlanuta, creator of The Hole in Your Head, named it among the best books she read in 2017, saying it still lingered in her mind and that she loved how it opens with a list of white things.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Alina Varlanuta (Creator/The Hole in Your Head)
I recently read it and it still flickers on my mind. It is an autobiographical writing reflecting on the narrator’s baby sister who died two hours after her birth. It is fragmented into different perspectives. Each opens a white dimension where mourning, frailty and death are dissolving word by word, in utter silence.
I loved the structure as the author makes at the beginning a list of the white things that are connected to the narrative. I read it as a book of and on silence, the silence you feel in front of the big words like death and life. The big, yet fragile words. One of my favorite lines: (related to a particular white pebble) ‘If silence could be condensed into the smallest, most solid object, this is how it would feel’.
I know that I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but for me it is very important how the paper feels when touched, how the cover completes the whole story. ‘The White Book’ is a beautiful book that feels frail, yet strong when touched (thick pages, just like in a photo book) and the photographs inserted in it complete the visual words.
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Sources
- The CEO Library Round-Up: Best Books Read in 2017