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The White Book
The White Book
Han Kang | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
The fragility of life
This is a heartbreaking, autobiographical account surrounding the death of the author's newborn sister, and the subsequent grieving process she goes through, seeing 'white' throughout her life.

Unlike @The Vegetarian: A Novel and @Human Acts, this book is not designed to have the narrative reach of those two novels. Instead, it is a fragmented meditation on the death of the unnamed baby sister, who died two hours after her birth. Han wisely gives as much value to those heightened two hours of life as she does to her death. The story of her birth, as narrated from the point of view of the mother, who is 22 when she is obliged to deliver the premature baby herself, is simply told.

The book is structured around the white things that become part of the rituals of mourning and remembering. The dominant theme is of transience, of fleeting life and the acceptance of human fragility. It feels mysterious and abstract at time, which seems to reflect the death itself. Hats off to Han Kang and @Deborah Smith for another wonderful translation.