2024-10-11

The White Book by Han Kang | Goodreads Amazon

The White Book by Han Kang | Goodreads





Want to read
Buy on Kobo


Rate this book
Edit my activity

The White Book


Han Kang, Deborah Smith (Translator)

3.81
18,485 ratings2,650 reviews
Shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize

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.










160 pages, Hardcover

First published May 25, 2016
Book details & editions
===
Product description
Review
A brilliant psychogeography of grief, moving as it does between place, history and memory... Poised and never flinches from serene dignity... The White Book is a mysterious text, perhaps in part a secular prayer book... Translated seamlessly by Smith, The White Book succeeds in reflecting Han's urgent desire to transcend pain with language -- Deborah Levy ― Guardian Published On: 2017-11-04

Wonderful. A quietly gripping contemplation on life, death and the existential impact of those who have gone before -- Eimear McBride

The White Book is a profound and precious thing, its language achingly intimate, each image haunting and true. It is a remarkable achievement. Han Kang is a genius -- Lisa McInerney

There is beauty and pain in every sentence and image, made sharper by their simplicity and aching honesty ― New Internationalist Published On: 2017-11-01

Each [chapter] is a miniature work of art in its own right... there is a crispness to [Han's] pieces evocative of the stark luminescence of white... This is a book you want to underline and highlight every other line or word as you read, yet every time I went to make my mark, my pencil hovered over the margins - deep as drifts of pillow-white snow - as I remained reticent to taint the perfect whiteness in front of me. The White Book is a shimmering, evocative work. Smith's peerless translation captures every last tiny nuance, the resultant prose so beautiful and affecting that it stops you in your tracks -- Lucy Scholes ― National UAE Published On: 2017-10-30

A fragile work of literature ― Live Mint Published On: 2017-11-17

Delicate and thoughtful and concise and dense and strong; this is the kind of writing I like to read slowly -- Jon McGregor ― Guardian Published On: 2017-11-25

An astonishingly rendered work of fiction... Precise, subversive, fierce and deceptively opaque... A sublime expression of grief's incongruous byways, its busy inactivity, its larger, more elaborate intrusions -- Catherine Taylor ― Financial Times Published On: 2017-11-10

[Han] in her new work transgresses literary convention and examines the constellation of pain at the heart of her mother's first pregnancy... Shot through with pain and paradox [...] Kang transforms obliteration into promise. Loss and living are counterpointed, neither meaning revoked -- Katherine Waters ― Arts Desk Published On: 2017-11-05

[An] astonishing novel... with such tenderness [that] incites us to examine our own experience and place in the world... It's a profound piece of work [...] that is as much concerned with what is unsaid and omitted, as what is revealed... Han's painful, exquisite story is a philosophical lament for all the shades of life -- Sinead Gleeson ― Irish Times Published On: 2017-11-11

Incantatory... The White Book reveals Han to be an innovative author committed to formal experimentation... Intensely personal, hypnotically serene, and mournfully meditative, Han's thanatopsis reminds readers of the revivifying power of memory and the extent to which we are uniquely endowed within the natural world to withstand the vagaries of forgetfulness and life's nagging ephemerality -- Brian Haman ― Asian Review of Books Published On: 2017-11-06

An intensely emotional series of accounts that form an outline of losses which are invisible, but still palpably felt -- Eric Anderson ― Lonesome Reader Published On: 2017-11-09

Evocative and beautifully laconic, this book is about belonging, grief and the sensory experience of being alive ― Book Riot Published On: 2017-11-07

A brilliant psychogeography -- Deborah Levy Published On: 2018-05-28

A tender evocation of grief and absence... Han Kang is a real artist ― Irish Times Published On: 2019-02-16

Formally daring, emotionally devastating and deeply political -- Katie Kitamura ― International New York Times Published On: 2019-03-07
About the Author
Han Kang was born in Gwangju, South Korea, and moved to Seoul at the age of ten. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University. Her writing has won the Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today's Young Artist Award, and the Korean Literature Novel Award. The Vegetarian, her first novel to be translated into English, was published by Portobello Books in 2015 and won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. She is also the author of Human Acts (Portobello, 2016) and The White Book (Portobello, 2017). She is based in Seoul.

Deborah Smith's translations from the Korean include two novels by Han Kang, The Vegetarian and Human Acts, and two by Bae Suah, A Greater Music and Recitation. In 2015 Deborah completed a PhD at SOAS on contemporary Korean literature and founded Tilted Axis Press. In 2016 she won the Arts Foundation Award for Literary Translation. She tweets as @londonkoreanist.
Product details
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Portobello Pb (25 July 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 128 pages

===
778 people are currently reading
38.2k people want to read

About the author

Han Kang

43 books5,484 followers
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

소설가 한강

Han Kang is the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won. She was born in Kwangju and at the age of 10, moved to Suyuri (which she speaks of affectionately in her work "Greek Lessons") in Seoul.

She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University. She began her writing career when one of her poems was featured in the winter issue of the quarterly Literature and Society. She made her official literary debut in the following year when her short story "The Scarlet Anchor" was the winning entry in the daily Seoul Shinmun spring literary contest.

Since then, she has gone on to win the Yi Sang Literary Prize (2005), Today's Young Artist Award, and the Korean Literature Novel Award. As of summer 2013, Han teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts while writing stories and novels.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Han Kang “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Readers also enjoyed


Community Reviews

5 stars
4,665 (25%)
4 stars
7,405 (40%)
3 stars
4,933 (26%)
2 stars
1,198 (6%)
1 star
284 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 10 of 2,650 reviews
Profile Image for Sean Barrs .
Sean Barrs
1,122 reviews47k followers
November 18, 2020
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.
__________________________________
Profile Image for Jim Fonseca.
Jim Fonseca
1,137 reviews7,820 followers
January 15, 2022
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).

description

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.”

description

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.”

description

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]

description

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
Profile Image for emma.
emma
2,257 reviews74.7k followers
July 17, 2022
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
Profile Image for Diane S ☔.
Diane S ☔
4,897 reviews14.4k followers
March 8, 2019
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.
Profile Image for Bianca.
Bianca
1,196 reviews1,044 followers
February 11, 2018
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...
Profile Image for Elyse Walters.
Elyse Walters
4,010 reviews11.4k followers
January 7, 2019
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
Profile Image for Repellent Boy.
Repellent Boy
552 reviews576 followers
August 12, 2021
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!
Profile Image for Hannah.
Hannah
629 reviews1,161 followers
May 23, 2018
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.

===


From other countries

Emilia García
5.0 out of 5 stars An Extraordinary Book
Reviewed in Mexico on 18 January 2023
Verified Purchase
Writing a review of this book is difficult, I think it's something that should be experienced without expectations.
As for the shipment, it arrived two days earlier than expected, I would only suggest to the seller that in addition to the protective bags they add an extra coating to the covers since the book arrived dirty due to friction against the box. Other than that, great service:)
Report
Translated from Spanish by Amazon
See original ·Report translation

Soronia
5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite
Reviewed in the United States on 15 April 2018
Verified Purchase
You might want to hate this book because it seems ludicrous: a list of white objects, with brief reflections or stories attached. I feared it would be pretentious, or boring But it's not. The writing is gorgeous, affecting, thunderous...there's a list of superlatives on the back in case you need help finding adequate words when you're done. I did. This is great. Han Kang is great. Fade to black.
18 people found this helpful
Report

Aslan
5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 April 2019
Verified Purchase
I have not finished the book, because it’s so wonderful I had to slow down to savour it more. Although some have called it self-indulgence on Author Kang’s part, I think the emotions expressed within 흰 are the kind that cannot be isolated from their owner. And because of that, I felt a perfect understanding with the author and the stories deeply touched my heart. Actually, someone I love very much who passed away last year read this book in its original Korean. As I am grieving for him now, I feel deeply connected and comforted by reading it. This book has moved me to tears, not by attachment to characters or by plot, but by the simple mode of expression which both stirs and soothes my grief. I believe it’s my first experience of the kind. I truly recommend this book to anyone softhearted, and especially anyone who has experienced deep grief.
12 people found this helpful
Report

Felix
5.0 out of 5 stars I think the readers who have read Vegetarian could understand this book better in that sense
Reviewed in Canada on 26 July 2018
Verified Purchase
Very inspiring book. This is about a white from black, life from death, and hope from despair.
I think the readers who have read Vegetarian could understand this book better in that sense.
Report

Cliente Amazon
1.0 out of 5 stars didn't like it at all!
Reviewed in Italy on 17 July 2019
Verified Purchase
I don't recommend anyone read it!
One person found this helpful
Report
Translated from Italian by Amazon
See original ·Report translation

Hieroglyphen
5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful, sad and poetic book
Reviewed in Germany on 20 November 2020
Verified Purchase
This book is a meditation.
Report
Translated from German by Amazon
See original ·Report translation

regtur
1.0 out of 5 stars The package was destroyed
Reviewed in France on 27 April 2018
Verified Purchase
The attached photo was taken when I opened my mailbox.
Fortunately, the 3 books ordered were intact, but it appears that the delivery man opened the box (torn) in order to insert one by one into the hole of the BAL.
For me it is inadmissible
Customer image
Report
Translated from French by Amazon
See original ·Report translation

samayavel
5.0 out of 5 stars Novel in verses
Reviewed in India on 12 November 2018
Verified Purchase
It's my favorite author Han Kang's recent Novel. In her 2016 Manbooker International Prize awarded novel 'The Vegetarian' there were many prose poems in between the chapters I thought she can write verses also. For my woder her next novel 'The White Book' is a novel in verses. You can read the whole book in one sitting. It's a more interesting work.
2 people found this helpful
Report

María cecilia
5.0 out of 5 stars Hauntingly beautiful
Reviewed in Mexico on 23 December 2021
Verified Purchase
The writing of this was absolutely beautiful, I'm definitely going to be thinking about this book for a long time
Report

A.L.
5.0 out of 5 stars White Breath
Reviewed in the United States on 22 February 2022
Verified Purchase
“Wow,” I whispered, closing the book and holding it for some time. It defies opinion. It is that breath muttered, like life, petering out for eternity. Kang honors her subject with a remarkable grace and controlled resilience, speaking to Kang’s capabilities as both a writer and human being.
8 people found this helpful
Report
===


===

Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)