| Title | : | The White Book |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0525573062 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780525573067 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 160 |
| Publication | : | First published May 25, 2016 |
| Awards | : | Wellcome Book Prize Longlist (2018), Warwick Prize for Women in Translation (2018), International Booker Prize (2018) |
From Booker Prize-winner and literary phenomenon Han Kang, a lyrical and disquieting exploration of personal grief, written through the prism of the color white
While on a writer's residency, a nameless narrator wanders the twin white worlds of the blank page and snowy Warsaw. THE WHITE BOOK becomes a meditation on the color white, as well as a fictional journey inspired by an older sister who died in her mother's arms, a few hours old. The narrator grapples with the tragedy that has haunted her family, an event she colors in stark white--breast milk, swaddling bands, the baby's rice cake-colored skin--and, from here, visits all that glows in her memory: from a white dog to sugar cubes.
As the writer reckons with the enormity of her sister's death, Han Kang's trademark frank and chilling prose is softened by retrospection, introspection, and a deep sense of resilience and love. THE WHITE BOOK--ultimately a letter from Kang to her sister--offers powerful philosophy and personal psychology on the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.
The White Book Reviews
-
Music is often associated with memory. I often hear a song and I’m taken back to a time, to a place, to a person, to an experience that I never will be able to regain: to a moment that song embodies that will forever be lost in the endless river of life. For Han Kang the colour white has a similar effect; it smashes open the floodgates to her mind and drops torrents of memory over the body of her writing.
"Why do old memories constantly drift to the surface?"
Because they never leave us. Because they never stop defining who we are and shaping our paths. Han Kang is haunted by her past, by her memories and by her dreams of the dead. There is a certain sense of guilt, of sorrow, that permeates her own life, a life that exists when another did not. This hangs over the writing, and the author’s conscience, forever digging outwards from the back of her mind: it’s a blazing reminder, one she endures with every step.
“This life only needed one of us to live it. If you had lived beyond those first few hours, I would not be living now. My life means yours is impossible. Only in the gap between darkness and light, only in that blue-tinged breach, do we manage to make out each other’s faces."
Such a thing questions the very nature of writing itself. What’s it for? Is it to entertain? Is it to tell a story? Is it to communicate a thought, a dream, an idea, or can it have another purpose?
It can be cleansing; it can be cathartic and it can even be a means of finding oneself. By exploring such a simple idea as a colour, a colour that embodies much to the writer, it allows her to explore the dark recesses of her mind and come to terms with emotions and experiences that have hung over her for a lifetime.
The White Book is a powerful evocation of human spirit, of human pain and suffering, but it’s also a book about learning to live with our daemons and our darkest experiences; it’s a book about life, and it’s also a book about death: it’s a book about the small amount of stark whiteness that separates the two.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via
My Linktree.
__________________________________ -
3.5
-
I read this book because I recently enjoyed this author’s novel The Vegetarian. The White Book is not a novel; it’s a collection of mostly one-page mini-essays, almost meditations, on things that are white.
The focus is on loneliness, loss and mortality. Several are about the whiteness of pain (the author suffers from migraines).
Amazing how many things that lend themselves to symbolism are white when you think of it. So we have pieces on baby gowns, rice, fog, breast milk, salt, sugar, pills, hair, the Milky Way, bones, ashes, and so on.
There’s also a lot about winter: snow, snowflakes, frost, sleet. The narrator is visiting Warsaw, but her own country of Korea has harsh winters and she also visits the Artic to see the midnight sun. So there’s a lot on winter whiteness: snow, snowflakes, ice, sleet, frost.
A couple of examples of good writing:
“At times my body feels like a prison, a solid, shifting island threading through the crowd. A sealed chamber carrying all the memories of the life I have lived and the mother tongue from which they are inseparable. The more stubborn the isolation, the more vivid these unlooked-for fragments, the more oppressive their weight. So that is seems the place I flee to is not so much a city on the other side of the world as further into my own interior.”
In the chapter Frost:
“Trees shiver off their leaves, incrementally lightening their burden. Solid objects like stones or buildings appear subtly more dense. Seen from behind, men and women bundled up in heavy coats are saturated with a mute presentiment, that of people beginning to endure.”
The author occasionally gives us poetry:
“Because at some point you will inevitably cast me aside.
When I am at my weakest, when I am most in need of help,
You will turn your back on me, cold and irrevocable.
And that is something perfectly clear to me.
And I cannot now return to the time before that knowledge.”
I enjoyed the book. Reading it was like meditating.
[Edited 1/14/22]
The author (b. 1970) has written a half-dozen novels of which three have been translated into English. Her book, The Vegetarian, won the 2016 Man Booker prize for translations. This book reviewed here, The White Book, was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker prize.
Top photo from marketplace.canva.com
Photo of Warsaw from gettyimages.com
Snow at Argenteuil by Claude Monet, 1875 on Wikipedia
The author from lithub.com -
i am almost speechless.
which, if you have the misfortune of having encountered me before, you know happens precisely never.
this book is so beautifully written, so emotive, and so brilliant. i initially gave it 5 stars, and i would have kept it there, except i have since read
bluets and found it a slightly more satisfying (for me) version of this.
even still, it has to be 4.5.
han kang hive stays winning.
bottom line: wow wow wow.
------------
pre-review
holy f*cking moley.
review to come / 4.5 stars
------------
currently-reading updates
i have loyalty to two things in life: brown butter chocolate chip cookies, and han kang
------------
reading books by asian authors for aapi month!
book 1:
kim jiyoung, born 1982
book 2:
siren queen
book 3:
the heart principle
book 4:
n.p.
book 5:
the hole
book 6:
set on you
book 7:
disorientation
book 8:
parade
book 9:
if i had your face
book 10:
joan is okay
book 11:
strange weather in tokyo
book 12:
sarong party girls
book 13:
the wind-up bird chronicle
book 14:
portrait of a thief
book 15:
sophie go's lonely hearts club
book 16:
chemistry
book 17:
heaven
book 18:
the atlas six
book 19:
the remains of the day
book 20:
is everyone hanging out without me? and other concerns
book 21:
why not me?
book 22:
when the tiger came down the mountain
book 23:
the lies we tell
book 24:
to paradise
book 25:
pachinko
book 26:
you are eating an orange. you are naked.
book 27:
cursed bunny
book 28:
almond
book 29:
a tiny upward shove
book 30:
ms ice sandwich
book 31:
the woman in the library
book 32:
nothing like i imagined
book 33:
night sky with exit wounds
book 34:
all the lovers in the night
book 35: the white book -
Such a difficult book to describe, difficult to review. A very unconventional narrative, but the writing is just gorgeous. Sad at times, a reflection on the sister that she never knew using the color white. Descriptions of the feelings these things invoke, politics, reminders of the past, present. Meaningful. Things that make one ponder, ask questions.
Lace curtain. "Is it because of some billowing whiteness within us, unsullied, inviolate, that our encounters with objects so pristine never fail to leave us moved?"
Breath cloud. "On cold mornings,chat first White cloud of escaping breath is proof that we are living. Proof of our bodies warmth."
Handkerchief. "A single handkerchief drifted down, slowest of all, finally to the ground. Like a bird with it's wings half furled. Like a soul tentatively sounding out a place it might alight."
Each item is followed by a descriptive meaning, all beautiful. One could literally find special quotes everywhere. A book to savour. -
This is the 3rd book I’ve read by Han Kang, a phenomenal contemporary Korean writer. ‘The Vegetarian’.....was fierce with haunting prose making it very hard to put down. It was gut-wrenching painful for me personally having survived the horrific years when our daughter was starving herself to death.....
Yet....I knew I was reading something brilliant. I became an instant fan of Han Kang.
The next book I read by this young exceptional author was ‘Human Acts’. It was brutal.... one that I continued to feel its depths long after I read it. Do you ever throw your hands up in the air - literary clueless in understanding why people are cruel, mean, cold hearted TO YOU?.......well....take it 1,000 steps more....
Why do we have such extreme violence in the world? Bloody frightening riots - killing hundreds of people at a time. Han wrote about how a single event changed a nation in South Korea.
Both books were devastatingly powerful - literary masterpieces about humanity.
“The White Book” ....is equally a masterpiece- one that possibly took more courage to write than her first two books....given she is blood related to this story.
Note....”The White Book” ‘does’ tell a story ....but is not written in the traditional way a novel is. Han reflects on her list of white things in short chapters, ( and inserts other relating topics), .... telling a story - from personal history - imagination, loss, grief, hope, human fragility, and love.
At the start Han says, “In the spring, when I decided to write about white things, the first thing I did was make a list”:
Swaddling bands
Newborn gown
Salt
Snow
Ice
Moon
Rice
Waves
Yulan
White Bird
“Laughing whitely”
Blank paper
White Dog
White Hair
Shroud
“With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book and the process of writing it would be transformative,
would itself transform into something like white ointment applied to a swelling, like gauze laid over a wound. Something I needed.
Han’s hopes in writing this book was to be “transformative”. It’s a story that is part of her personal history.
It was definitely transformative to me. I looked at life and death in ways I haven’t before. Han opens a new pathway in which to examine life and death - past history and how it shapes our current and future selves.
Starting with the title of this book: “The White Book”.....
I began this book by sitting for 10 minutes -meditating - simply preparing myself to open a Han Kang book.
I wondered about the title....”what might it mean to Han?” ( I’ve learned a little from the 3 books by Han: the titles of her books are ALWAYS POWERFUL with much more depth than first glance. So I wondered....”why white things”?
The word *WHITE* in western cultures symbolizes purity, elegance, peace, and cleanliness; brides traditionally wear white dresses at their weddings. But in China, Korea, and some Asian countries white represents ‘death’, ‘morning’, and ‘bad luck’, and is traditionally worn at funerals.
I honestly will never EVER think of a newborn’s birth- their LIFE - if they should die soon after birth - the same again - EVER - AFTER READING THIS BOOK!
I know women who gave birth - and their baby died just hours after their birth. ALL I saw ( which wasn’t it enough?), was the immediate grief. I saw something else which Han presented. She shifted my thoughts about an early death. Still morning - still deep sadness from the sudden death...but what difference does this short life bring to others? I kept reading - and my mind expanded.
In Han’s book - we learn that a 22 year mother gives birth to a premature baby girl. She is dead in two hours. From there - as I continued reading - I began to look how this baby girl’s life - for two hours- spoke to Han [the inspiration for this book comes from true events in Han’s life] ....
at some point.....”it occurred to me that if I had been similarity visited myself, by my mothers first child who had lived just two hours, I would have been utterly oblivious.
Because the girl had never learn language at all. For an hour her eyes opened, held them in the direction of our mother’s face, but her optic nerves never had time to awaken and so that face had remained beyond reach. For her, there would have been only a voice, ( the mother’s voice of grief), >....’DON’T DIE. FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T DIE’. Unintelligible words, the only words she was ever to hear”.
More memories.... The year after the mother lost her first child, she had another premature baby.
“Had those lives made it safely past the point of crisis, my own birth, which followed three years later, and that of my brother four years after, would not have come about”.
“This life needed only one of us to live it. If you had lived beyond those first few hours, I would not be living now. My life means yours is impossible. Only in the gap between darkness and light, only in that blue-tinged breach, do we manage to make out each other’s faces”.
The narrator was vitality aware of walking side by side with her sister. The sister she never knew - the sister she wished for - the sister who the narrator loved. They shared a profound unspoken language together.
YOUR EYES
“ I saw differently when I looked through your eyes. I walked differently when I walked with your body. I wanted to show you clean things. Before brutality, sadness, despair, pain, clean things were only for you, clean things above all. But I didn’t come off as I intended. Again and again I peered into your eyes, as though searching for form in a deep, black mirror”.
There are other short stories - about a dog, a white butterfly, a white bird, wild ducks, university classmates who had studied literature together , ( their death), ....and their life - rejuvenation, revivification and White Flowers .....
“The brief March blooming of two yulans”. Touching story.
Another achingly beautiful book, by Han Kang, ( A woman I wish was my own sister), with it’s ‘new-ways-of-looking-at-life-and-death’, .....will stay with me for a long time.
Grateful to be offered an advance copy by Crown Publishing, Netgalley, and Han Kang -
Hmm ...
I don't know what to make of this book.
It's elegant, in a minimalist, subdued kind of way.
The font size is minuscule, there's a lot of white space and empty pages.
There are some nice passages, but also a whole lot of simple, simplistic, and "I don't get the point" kind of writing - writing for the sake of writing, or better said, I was reading it and not getting much out of it, despite wanting to.
I don't know - it's one of those "concept books".
You definitely have to be in the right kind of mood/frame of mind to appreciate it.
Or maybe not. It's not terrible. I wouldn't call it great either. It's probably one of those books you give more value to because of who the writer is. Probably.
I don't really know... -
Lo que me hace sentir Han Kang con sus historias, no me lo hace sentir ninguna otra autora o autor. Me tiene desde la primera hasta la última página en un estado de agitación, con el corazón en un puño. Tiene la habilidad de hacerme sentir muchas cosas con muy pocas palabras. Trastorna totalmente mis emociones y es algo que no todos los autores consiguen en mí. Y menos conseguirlo con todas sus obras (al menos con las que tenemos por ahora publicadas en español). Y eso es lo que me ha pasado con Blanco.
Han Kang se va a servir de diferentes cosas blancas para contarnos la historia de una tragedia familiar, y cuales son sus sentimientos respecto a este dolor. Ante la pureza del blanco, la autora trata de consagrase con ese dolor, que la sigue atormentando. El libro fue escrito durante la estancia de Han Kang en una ciudad europea, que durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial fue completamente devastada y esta ciudad reconstruida, prácticamente nueva, la inspira para hablar de un episodio tan doloroso del pasado.
Lo primero que destaca es la forma tan curiosa de narrar la historia. Parecieran pequeños relatitos sin unión, meras opiniones que le surgen al pensar sobre uno de estos elementos u objetos. Pero poco a poco vamos entrando en la historia, en el drama. Los capítulos no duran más de tres páginas, en algunos casos solo una, pero aún así conseguían mantenerme en silencio reflexionando al acabar cada uno de ellos. Es un libro cortito, pero con una gran profundidad.
Si lo comparo con las otras dos obras que tenemos en español de la autora, "La vegetariana" o "Actos humanos" (que ya son dos de mis libros favoritos a día de hoy), en este vemos mayor "sencillez" en cuanto a forma, y quizás es mucho más directo, aunque la autora sigue sirviéndose del vehículo de la metáfora para represesentar mensajes mucho más profundos. Mensajes que continuamente te invitan a la reflexión y que emocionan.
Y no quiero acabar mi opinión sin mencionar como escribe esta mujer. Su pluma es tan exquisita y profunda que consigue hacerte empatizar con cualquier realidad, aunque te pille al otro lado del mundo y no hayas vívido nada ni remotamente parecido. Sabe sintonizar muy bien con las emociones humanas y además lo hace siempre de manera original, siempre con su toque especial. En definitiva, Han Kang es mi autora favorita y solo espero y deseo que su editorial en español no abandone la publicación de sus libros, porque aunque me lo hagan pasar mal, me dan vida y los necesito todos. ¡Vaya genia! -
I am quite unsure how to review this brilliant little book. I think it is something that needs to be experienced rather than read about. Told in a series of very short musings on different white things, Han Kang circles her own grief and Warsaw’s scarred history in a way that I found absolutely moving. I read the book mostly in one sitting (it is very short) and can only recommend doing that. This way the interplay between the blank spaces on the page, the photography, and the writing worked to create an immersive experience.
Han Kang’s writing is economical; there is not a spare word to be found. It gives the impression of deep concentration and thoughtfulness which worked extremely well for this book. Another way to describe her prose would be elegant and precise. I loved this. I find there to be something fascinating in being able to write about personal trauma in this way – rather than it reading clinical it made the book all the more profound for me.
I have recently read Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, which much in the same way deals with a colour (blue). But the two books are radically different besides their obvious similarities. Nelson’s writing is a lot more visceral and blunt, whereas Han Kang creates the illusion of distance while being obviously affected. I am very glad to have read of those these in short succession.
There is now only one book of hers left that has been translated to English and I haven’t read. I am a huge fan of Han Kang’s writing.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on
my blog. -
الأبيض هنا ..ليس حليبياً ناصعاً..بل تتمازج به رمادية حزينة تتسلل إليك في نعومة وهدوء....
كل شيء هنا يوحي بعزلة متفردة..خفة الجمال...وهن الحياة...
ومع ذلك ستدرك بأن ثمة أشياء صغيرة تحتفظ بقدرتها على إثارة حماستك مهما انقضى الزمن وسحقتك المعاناة...
كتأمل قطعة سكر بحبيباتها الصغيرة اللامعة حتى وإن لم تمد يدك لتناولها.... -
Now shortlisted for the Man Booker International - and alongside Flights, one of the two outstanding remaining books:
"제발 죽지마. 한 시간쯤 더 흘러 아기는 죽었다.
죽은 아기를 가슴에 품고 모로 누워 그 몸이 점점 싸늘해지는 걸 견뎠다.
더이상 눈물이 흐르지 않았다."
"For God's sake don't die. Around an hour later, the baby was dead.
They lay there on the kitchen floor, my mother on her side with the dead baby clutched to her chest, feeling the cold gradually enter into the flesh, sinking through to the bone.
No more crying. "
Chapter 5 of 한강 (Han Kang's) quite brilliant
Human Acts, as per Deborah Smith's English translation, concludes with the words:
Don’t die.
Just don’t die.
She explained at the time:through writing the life of torture survivor Lim Seon-ju, I again experienced things which it seems that, as a woman like her, I did not want to have to bear. And so, at first this chapter had the tone of observing Seon-ju from more of a distance, one night in August 2002. I then realised that this was because I had been trying to distance myself from her, and so I rewrote the whole chapter from the beginning. I struggled to write precisely her feeling of being unable to press the button of the dictaphone. And I wrote the final sentence of the chapter, ‘please don’t die’, in Seon-ju’s voice. Don’t die; that was something I wanted to say to her, to all the living, to us.
Later 한강 realised that these words were also sub-consciously influenced by a story her mother had told her, one she retells here:
My mother's first child died, I was told, less than two hours into life.
I was told that she was a girl, with a face as white as a crescent-moon rice cake. Though she was very small, two months premature, her features were clearly defined. I can never forget, my mother told me, the moment she opened her two black eyes and turned them towards my face.
At the time, my parents were living in an isolated house, in the countryside near the primary school where my father taught. My mother's due date was still far off, so she was completely unprepared when, one morning, her waters broke. There was no one around. The village's sole telephone was in a tiny shop by the bus stop – twenty minutes away. My father wouldn't be back from work for another six hours.
It was early winter, the first frost of the year. My twenty-two-year-old mother crawled into the kitchen and boiled some water to sterilise a pair of scissors. Fumbling in her sewing box, she found some white cloth that would do for a newborn's gown.
The White Book is her beautifully poignant tribute to her 언니, her eonni, the elder sister she never had, the little girl with the face of a 달떡 (crescent-moon rice cake), with her two black eyes, dressed in the white gown that was used to swaddle her and later, after her two brief hours of life, served as her funeral shroud.
'White as a moon-shaped rice cake' never made much sense until, at six, I was old enough to help out with making the rice cakes for Chuseok, forming the dough into small crescent moons. Before being steamed, those bright white shapes of rice dough are a thing so lovely they do not seem of this world. Only afterwards, dished up on a plate with a pine-needle garnish, did they become disappointingly matter-of-fact. Glistening with roasted sesame oil, their colour and texture transformed by heat and steam, they were tasty, of course, but utterly unlike their former loveliness.
So when my mother said 'white as rice cake', I realised, she meant a rice cake before it is steamed. A face as startlingly pristine as that. These thoughts made my chest grow tight, as though compressed with an iron weight.
한강 started the book on an extended visit to Warsaw (as an aside, she finished it in my home county of Norfolk) - although Warsaw is referred to only as 'the city' in the book - and another key inspiration was aerial footage she saw of the city, footage shot in Spring 1945 by an American plane:
The city seen from far above appeared as though mantled with snow. A grey-white sheet of snow or ice on which a light dusting of soot had settled, sullying it with dappled stains.
But as the plane gets lowe, the snow is revealed as the ashes of the burnt and almost entirely destroyed city. Visiting Warsaw some 70 years later, she realises:
The fortresses of the old quarter, the splending palace, the lakeside villa on the outskirts where royalty once summered - all are fakes. They are all new things, painstakingly reconstructed based on photographs, pictures, maps. Where a pillar or perhaps the lowest part of a wall happens to have survived, it has been incorporated into the new structure. The boundaries which separate old from new, the seams bearing witness to destruction, lie conspicuously exposed.
It was on that day, as I walked through the park, that she first came into my mind.
A person who has met the same fate as that city.
The White Book was published as 흰 in Korean, one of two Korean words for white, the other 하얀. As the author explained in an interview:The Korean title of this book is the single-syllable hwin (흰). If hayan (하얀) indicates the white as an ordinary colour, in hwin there might be a certain sadness, the colour of fate. The white of this book’s title is a fundamental colour passing from a baby’s swaddling cloths to a shroud, through the white of salt and snow and frost and waves, the wings of a living butterfly and the wings of the same creature, grown transparent in death.
The White Book is both a fictional novel and, in the author's words, "could be read as narrative poem in 65 fragments" each focused around something that is white - a newborn's gown, salt, snow, ice, blank paper, fog (that vast, soundless undulation between this world and the next, each cold water molecule formed of drenched black darkness) etc.
[NB there are some similarities in concept to [book:Bluets|6798263] by Maggie Nelson, but while Nelson's work is more erudite - an essay based on blue - 한강's book is more poetic, moving, heartbreaking.]
The first section 나 (I) tells, all in this same format of brief prose poems, how the author came to write the book, but in the longest and 2nd section, 그녀 (her), she writes as if her sister had lived and was in the city instead of her: As I have imagined her, she walks this city’s streets.. At a reading I attended, the author explained how she wanted to "lend her body" to the characters in Human Acts and to "lend her life" to her sister here.
And in the last section 모든 흰 (All Whiteness) the narration return to the 1st person, as she addresses her sister:
I wanted to show you clean things. Before brutality, sadness, despair, filth, pain, clean things that were only for you, clean things above all. But it didn't come off like that. Again and again I peered into your eyes, as though searching for form in a deep, black mirror.
And there is also a nod to the events described in Human Acts when, seeing wreaths laid in the city she is visiting, the narrator thought of certain instances in her own country’s history, the country that she had left to come here, of the dead that had been insufficiently mourned
As for the translation, there has been some controversy around Deborah Smith's work, on
The Vegetarian in particular. Frankly, some of the commentary has missed the point entirely, as what ultimately matters is the end result, the work that is presented to the English reader, and there only two things need be said:
1) The author works has a very close relationship with her translator, and is clearly delighted with the result.
(although see
http://m.yna.co.kr/amp/kr/contents/?c... for her take in the Korean press - she clearly was a little disappointed with the factual mistakes in The Vegetarian - and much happier with the translations of the later books, plus see acknowledges herself that translation does mean the need to produce a different work)
2) As a reader, too, the resulting is truly wonderful.
Smith does have to wrestle with some untranslatable puns - e.g. the Korean riddle 개는 개인데 짖지 않는 개는? (What is a dog that's a dog but doesn't bark), that gives the English answer 'fog' (which at least rhymes), the Korean playing on Korean 안개 (fog) / (안 개 not dog). And the Korean near homonyms for elder sister and front teeth (언니, 아랫니). If I had to make one small point, there is a passage written in the 3rd person where the narrator suddenly refers to 'our mother' - the Korean collective 우리의 would be much more natural here (see
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20171...) but rather jars in English.
The English edition is also illustrated with some beautiful photos of performance art 한강 did around the time of the Korean book's launch, e.g. making a small baby dress from gauze, making for a truly beautiful, powerful and moving work of art.
Sources:
https://www.hankangwhitebook.com/light/
http://www.thewhitereview.org/feature...
https://frieze.com/article/ideal-syll...
and a verbal discussion between the author and her English publisher,
Max Porter, which I was fortunate enough to attend. -
A short and intensely personal and poetic meditation but a very difficult one to encapsulate in a review.
The starting point is a simple list of white things but the book is haunted by many darker undertones. I am not sure how much I understood but it felt profoundly human, spare and elegant, every word charged.
This is my second book from the Man Booker International longlist (I had already read
Die, My Love and bought this one before it was announced). -
Shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, The White Book offers a spare meditation on memory, loss, and the color white. The book consists of a series of lyrical prose poems, each centering on a white object, from a flake of snow to a baby swaddle; across all pieces Han Kang recounts piecemeal the traumatic story of her mother’s giving birth to a stillborn daughter, years before she had the writer herself. The concept’s interesting and the narrative’s powerful, but the minimalist poems themselves alternate between feeling understated and underdeveloped. Worth checking out paired with The Vegetarian.
-
ترنيمة هادئة تُلون الحزن والفقد باللون الأبيض
-
الكورية هان كانغ ، في آخر اصدار لها ، ركزت على اللون الأبيض بلمعانه وبريقه ، كوصف لشعور داخلي باللانهائيّة ، جعلت من سطح الورق الأبيض لكتابها لوحاً لرسم مشاعرها الباردة والدافئة ، المُفرحة والحزينة ، مطعّمة بالألم النفسي ، تحكي سيرتها بلسان عذب ، ترثيّ أختها التي ولدت قبل أوانها ، وتوفيت في غضون ساعتين.
كانت تُخاطب أختها التي لولآ موتها لما كانت هي موجودة أصلاً ، حيث وضحت ذلك بقولها " هذه الحياة لآ تحتاج إلا واحدة منا فقط لكي تعيشها ، لو أنك عشتِ أكثر من تلك الساعتين ، لما كنت حيّة الآن ".
الرواية يمثلها شخصيّة واحدة ، هي شخصيّة كاتبتها ، ولايوجد بها أبطال ، هي أقرب الى حديث النفس التي تُجاهد من أجل الوصول الى الكمال .
"ليس هناك بياض (مفقود) شديدالبياض ، كذاكرة البياض"
"رغم أن الأبديّة في الحقيقة وهم ، يوماً ما ستتلاشى الأرض، يوماً ما سيتلاشى كل شيء ، يمكنها الشعور بوضوح لآ لبس فيه ، أن الحياة في نهاية المطاف ، لآ شيء سوى بضع لحظات قصيرة". -
English:
The White Book
Korean literary superstar Han Kang writes about the sister she has never met: When her mother was 22, she was living in a remote area and gave birth to a premature little girl who died after a few hours. In "The White Book", the author employs the color white to meditate on the experience and what it meant for her parents and herself, the child that probably wouldn't have been born had her older sister survived.
The short book is structured in equally short chapters, all referring to different things, memories and ideas that refer to the color white, like snow, sugar cubes, milk etc. (I guess I don't have to explain the symbolism of the color - it's similar to Western associations, except that it's also the color of death). Han Kang imagines herself in her sister's shoes and, by narrating from the perspective of a writer who newly arrived in foreign Warsaw, shows her the white things she ponders when thinking about her. The language is lyrical and highly poetic, frequently the typography ventures into the territory of poetry, and there are also some rather enigmatic photographs.
But is all of that really that deep? The book is a patchwork of vignettes relating to white, and often, it's less than subtle while feeling overblown. Interestingly, this was nominated for the International Booker the same year as
Flights which I experienced as similarly overrated: A bunch of perceptions presented as profound insights. And as a dog person, I have to add regarding the chapter on the white dog: There is no such thing as a "fighting dog" (in the German translation: "Kampfhund"), this kind of behavior is the result of animal abuse.
So IMHO, this is Han Kang's weekest book out of those I could get a hold of in translation (
The Vegetarian,
Human Acts,
Deine kalten Hände). Still, Han Kang is a great, interesting writer. If you'd like to learn more about the book, you can listen to our
podcast episode (in German). -
أنهيته البارحة، ولأوّل مرّة أشعر أنّ لون "البياض" يرافق أغلب التفاصيل الحزينة، وأنا الذي كان يظنّ أنّ "الأسود" هو المتهم بصفة الحزن.
هان كانغ هي مؤلفة رواية [ النباتية] والكتاب صادر حديثاً عن دار التنوير بترجمة "محمد نجيب"
الكتاب أشبهَ ما يكون بسيرة ذاتية للوجع، بدون حشو.
"كل لحظة هي قفزة إلى الأمام، من فوق جرفٍ غير مرئيّ حيث تتجدد حواف الزمن باستمرار، نرفع أقدامنا من على الأرض الصلبة للحياة التي عشناها حتى الآن، ونأخذ الخطوة التالية المحفوفة بالمخاطر نحو المجهول، نحو الفراغ. لا نفعل ذلك كي نُثبت امتلاكنا للشجاعة بل لأنّه لا يوجد أمامنا طريق آخر"
الثلج، الرمل الأبيض، ذرّات الملح، القماط، الحليب من ثدي أمّ ثكلى، سفوح الجبال البيضاء، مدينة مدمّرة بالكامل تظهر للرائي من عل أنّها بيضاء، كلبٌ أبيض هزيل.
كل هذه المفردات ستثير فيك الشجن والبرود.
حين أغلقتُ الكتاب فعلاً شعرتُ بالبرد يتسلل إلى أطراف أصابعي.
في آخر الكتاب حديثٌ قصيرٌ مع المؤلفة، تقول فيه: "لقد ساعدني الأسلوب الذي اتبعته في الكتابة، كان مثل طقس صغير أفعله كل يوم، تطهيرٌ للذات من نوع ما، كما لو أنني أقترب أكثر فأكثر، يوماً بعد يوم أثناء كتابته، من جزء معيّن في داخلنا، شيء لا يمكن تدميره، شيء لا يمكن تشويهه".
من اللطيف أنّها حين سُئلتْ: "منْ منَ القامات الأدبية ميتاً كان أو حياً تودّين لقاءه؟
أجابت: لا أريد مقابلة الكتّاب، لقد قابلتهم فعلاً من خلال أعمالهم، إذا قرأتُ كتبهم، وشعرتُ بشيء ما، فهذا لا يُقدّر بثمن، يصبُّ الكتّاب أفضل ما بداخلهم في كتبهم، لذا يكفيني أن أقرأ لهم". -
"I hold nothing dear. Not the place where I live, not the door I pass through every day, not even, damn it, my life."
Why you keep on doing this to me, Han Kang? Why? This is the 3rd time you have aesthetically broken my heart and I loved it! -
This comes across as a series of meditations on things that are white, written as vignettes in probing and poignant language you could call prose poetry. I was delighted with the majority of more than 60 pieces, most 1-2 pages long, as wonderful play with metaphors of white. But I was also drawn past delight to accommodation to dark and melancholy paths. The narrator, reflecting back from elderly years, is sharing how she comes to terms with many sources of suffering through the power of language. We get little nuggets suggesting hard life during the Korean War and sources of grief like her mother’s loss of a prematurely born sibling. The collection includes wintry pieces on frost, snow, sleet, and fog, the austerity of the moon, and moonlight, the blank exuberance of white flowers and white butterflies, the apparent spiritual messages carried by white birds, the primal memories of white sugar cubes and white rice cake, the monotone of white shrouds and death residue of bones and ashes.
To give you a chance to experience the craft of this poetic mind, I share a complete one of these little personal essays/prose poems:
Sugar Cubes
She was around ten years old at the time. Her first outing to a coffee shop, accompanied by her aunt, was also the first time she set eyes on sugar cubes. Those squares wrapped in white paper possessed an almost unerring perfection, surely too perfect for her. She peeled the paper carefully off and brushed a finger over that granular surface. She crumbled a corner, touched it to her tongue, nibbled at that dizzying sweetness, then eventually placed it in a cup of water and sighed as she watched it melt away.
She isn’t really partial to sweet things anymore, but the sight of a dish of wrapped sugar cubes still evokes the sense of witnessing something precious. There are certain memories that remain inviolate to the ravages of time. And to those of suffering. It is not true that everything is colored by time and suffering. It is not true that they bring everything to ruin.
I was prepared not to like this collection due to my sense that framing them on whiteness was just too arbitrary. But my inspiration and emotional impact from these pieces was quite high. I didn’t quite get the pleasure I had from a recent 5-star reading experience with William Gass’
On Being Blue (alas unreviewed).
This book was provided for review by the published through the Netgalley program. -
In the spring, when I decided to write about white things the first thing I did was to make a list.
Swaddling bands. Newborn gown. Salt. Snow. Ice. Moon. Rice. Waves. Yulan. White bird. “Laughing Whitely”. Blank paper. White dog. White hair. Shroud.
With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book, and that the process of writing it would be transformative, would itself transform, into something like white ointment applied to a swelling, like gauze laid over a wound …… I step recklessly into time I have not yet lived, into this book I have not yet written
Now (and not surprisingly) shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize.
This book was started by Han Kang during a period living in Warsaw (not identified in this book as such) – a period which enabled her to reflect on a story she had known (and had been part of her identity) all her life: that her mother’s first child died .. less than two hours into life.
Walking Warsaw, after seeing a film of it obliterated in 1945 she realises thatIn this City there is nothing that has existed for more than severnty years. The fortresses of the old quarter, the splending palace, the lakeside villa on the outskirts where royalty once summered - all are fakes. They are all new things, painstakingly reconstructed based on photographs, pictures, maps. Where a pillar or perhaps the lowest part of a wall happens to have survived, it has been incorporated into the new structure. The boundaries which separate old from new, the seams bearing witness to destruction, lie conspicuously exposed.
And that further reminds her of her sister A person who has met the same fate as that city. Who had at one time died or been destroyed and the way in which her own life is somehow bound with the life her sister would have lived had she survived and is in some ways built on the broken pediment of the sister’s life – in the same ways Warsaw is built on the ruin of its former self.
This causes her embark on an journey of the imagination I think of her coming here instead of me. To this curiously familiar City whose death and life resemble her own.
That journey, this book, consists of 60+ titled but unnumbered short chapters – each a reflection on a white coloured object, including those in the list above which opens the book.
The book itself is beautifully presented – with (performance) artistic black and (mainly) white photos, and with acres of blanks pages and white space. These features serve to further enhance and place focus on the meditative quality of the prose poems which make up the text.
Overall a moving and beautiful book from a wonderful author, brilliantly and sensitively translated by Deborah Smith (winner with Han Kang of the 2017 Man Booker International Prize) and founder of Tilted Axis Press. -
It’s been thrilling to see the recent high acclaim and popularity for Han Kang’s powerful distinctive writing. She won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for
“The Vegetarian” and her novel
“Human Acts” is one of the most devastating portrayals of the victims and survivors of mass warfare that I’ve read. Even though she’s been publishing fiction in her native South Korea since 1995, Kang’s writing has only recently been made widely available to a Western audience through Deborah Smith’s excellent translations. It feels exciting that there is such a large back catalogue which might still yet make it into English translation. “The White Book” is another fascinating new book by Han Kang that is uniquely different from those other two English translations, but encompasses some similar themes and familiar inflections of feeling. It could be classified somewhere between a novel, poetry and a memoir. It’s more like an artistic exercise to self consciously meditate on a colour by making a list of white things and then exploring the deeply personal memories and connections surrounding these objects. The result is an intensely emotional series of accounts that form an outline of losses which are invisible, but still palpably felt in the author’s life – especially that of Kang’s sister who was born prematurely and died shortly after her birth.
Read my full
review of The White Book by Han Kang on LonesomeReader -
(4.5) a meditation on the color white intertwined with a reflection on grief, memories, the passing of time and senses.
-
The narrator of this book doesn’t have a name in the book, although it’s no secret that this is an autobiographical work by this author and is a love letter to her long deceased older sister. The book starts with a list of white items, including swaddling bands, newborn gown, snow, ice and shroud. This book is a series of very short chapters consisting of meditation-like bursts of thoughts. Running through these thoughts is the story of the author’s young mother whose first child died only a couple of hours after birth. Throughout the years, the author has often thought of her sister and the grief that has never ended for her family.
The author not only writes about her sister’s death and the subsequent grief that death imposed upon her family but also writes in such beautiful detail of her sister’s two hours of life. I think one of the most touching parts of the book is when the author speaks directly to her sister, telling her how much she would have loved having a big sister.
This book has been short listed for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize and I can certainly understand why. Ms. Kang never fails to impress with the uniqueness of her work. “The Vegetarian” and “Human Acts” are both books that I will never forget and wrench my heart just thinking about them. I know that her newest book will be one that I will pick up again and will open randomly just to enjoy reading one of these lovely ruminations. I read a review that referred to the author’s short chapters as prayers and I think that is totally appropriate.
Most highly recommended.
This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review. -
I really enjoyed Kang's acclaimed 'The Vegetarian', and this was so totally different in both format and style, that it came as something of a surprise. And while I could certainly 'appreciate' what she does here, I must say the results left me rather ... cold and indifferent; even though the sad event that occasions her musings here are something I can relate to, having had a stillborn older sibling myself.
Partially this has do to my dislike for spare poetic meditations, but may also be due to expecting something more along the lines of Kang's first translated work. I'm not sorry I read it, especially as it can be read in about an hour, as over half its 161 pages are blank, and many others contain only a handful of lines. I just don't think this will leave much of a lasting impression. -
Ein stilles Buch, am besten geeignet für eiskalte Wintertage. Ein kluges Buch mit sehr metaphorischer Sprache. Tod trifft auf Hoffnung, weiß auf Leben. Ich bin sehr gerührt.
-
“Beyaz çiçekler hayatla mı bağlantılı, yoksa ölümle mi? Hint-Avrupa dillerinde boşluk anlamına gelen “blank”, beyaz ışık anlamına gelen “blanc”, siyah anlamına gelen “black” ve alev anlamına gelen “flame” sözcüklerinin hepsinin aynı kökten geldiğini bir yerlerde okumuştu kadın. Karanlığa sarılarak yanan bomboş beyaz alevler... Yoksa tüm bunlar martta kusa süreliğine çiçek açan iki manolya ağacı mıydı aslında?”
Çok net bir tema -beyaz- üzerine kısa öykülerden oluşan bir kitap. Beyaz olan her şey ve beyazın yansımalarında şekillenen duyguların ve anıların kayıt defteri niteliğinde. Beyazın eşlikçisi ise aslında zamansız doğup zamansız bir şekilde ölmüş ancak büyüme sürecinde benliğine işleyip yazarın derinliklerinde yaşayan kayıp ablanın acısı. Metin aslında üç bölümden oluşuyor ve bu üç bölüm arasında da belirli bir akış mevcut. İlk iki bölüm birbirleri arasında, ölen ile hayatta kalan kardeşin kendi açılarından yüzleşme niteliğindeyken, son bölüm aslında bir vedalaşma. Bir noktada ölümün gerçekleşmesi. Temasına uygun bir şekilde, çok güzel metaforlarla ve sade bir dil ile örülmüş terapötik bir metin. Aslında çok kısa bir sürede, 1-2 saatte okuyabileceğiniz ama etkisi ve çağrışımları daha uzun zamana yayılan kitaplardan. Benim yazardan okuduğum ilk kitaptı. Düzenli okurları sanırım bu kitabı çok sevmemiş ancak basit bir dille böyle derinlemesine bir anlatım beni çok etkiledi. -
I didn't connect with this one, unfortunately. I really enjoyed the previous two novels I read by Han Kang and was looking forward to reading this. However, it is quite a different style than her more traditional novels. This is an examination of the color white, paralleled with the story of a woman who loses her baby hours after it is born. It re-imagines that baby's life in tandem with the narrator's own life who came into existence only because her older sibling did not survive. It's a very melancholy subject but told in a sort of muted way—like the color white. Interesting concept but hard for me to get very invested in, especially because this reads more like poetry at times. Some chapters are only 1 paragraph long; none are more than 3-4 pages. It's a quick read but could also be read very slowly, savoring every line because it's undeniable that Kang is a talented wordsmith. I just prefer, however, her other stories to this one.
-
This book is sublimely beautiful and heart-breaking. I am not ashamed to admit that I cried when I read these words:
"If you can come to us now, then do. Slip on those clothes that the fire has borne to you, like slipping on a pair of a wings. Drink it like medicine or tea, our silence, dissolving into smoke in place of words."
Written like that, with no context, you may wonder why the outpouring of emotion. But this is a meditation on the death of the (unnamed) narrator’s baby sister, born before the narrator but who only lived for 2 hours. You will understand the context of the words above when you read the book. And if you appreciate beautiful literature, you surely should read this.
The book opens with a list of white things:
"In the spring, when I decided to write about white things the first thing I did was to make a list.
Swaddling bands.
Newborn gown.
Salt.
Snow.
Ice.
Moon.
Rice.
Waves.
Yulan.
White bird.
“Laughing Whitely”.
Blank paper.
White dog.
White hair.
Shroud.
With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book…"
This is followed by a series of very short chapters each of which is centred on a white object, including all those listed above.
The author wrote this book whilst on a writer’s residency in Warsaw, although the city is never named in the book. At one point, she walks around a building that was destroyed in a WWII air raid and then rebuilt to incorporate a pillar that survived from the original building. This brings the realisation that her sister’s presence in her life is like that pillar - it is part of her life, her history. She wonders if she can write about her sister’s death and somehow bring her new life.
The writing is incredibly poetic. It is a short novel and there is not a wasted word. Sentences like this, when reflecting on a white pebble are beautiful:
"If silence could be condensed into the smallest, most solid object, this is how it would feel, she thought."
A moving and beautiful book. -
Han Kang and Deborah Smith are a match made in heaven. I feel its genius every time I finish reading any of Kang's books in Smith's translation.
This one is a very special to me. The City she refers to in White Book, is my hometown, Warsaw.
The book at its core is a meditation on grief. Kang juxtaposes City surrounded by neverending grief after thousands of its inhabitants were killed during Warsaw uprising and herself grieving after a sister, who died two hours after birth.
Kang has been said to create "death-affirming" novels, this one is nothing else. In short, poetic, magical passages, meditating on various white themed items, the narrator goes through the internal journey of grief. It is a subtle, yet very visual, accompanied by photographs, memoir on loss. -
Yazar Han Kang'ı ilk defa okuyorum. Kelimeleri bu kadar az kullanıp bu kadar derinleşebilen yazar zannımca zor bulunur. Önce şaşırdım, neden dedim ama okudukça yavaşladım, aceleye getirmedim ve şu an kitap bitmesine rağmen hâlâ kitabın bana aktarmadığı, benim anlayamadığım şeyler olduğunu biliyorum. Dönüp dönüp okunabilecek bir eser. Bir de ilginç bir yorumum olacak; bence kadınlar erkeklere göre çok daha fazlasını bulacaklar, buluyorlar kitapta. İçimden bir ses öyle diyor çünkü söylemi sıra dışı şekilde güçlü, dişil. Bu ayrıca hoşuma gitti. Sırada Vejetaryen var.
