WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 2024
Like a long winter's dream, this new novel by Han Kang takes us on a journey from contemporary South Korea into its painful history
One morning in December, Kyungha receives a message from her friend Inseon saying she has been hospitalized in Seoul and asking that Kyungha join her urgently. The two women have last seen each other over a year before, on Jeju Island, where Inseon lives and where, two days before this reunion, she has injured herself chopping wood. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation, Inseon has had to leave behind her pet bird, which will quickly die unless it receives food. Bedridden, she begs Kyungha to take the first plane to Jeju to save the animal.
Unfortunately, a snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon's house at all costs, but the icy wind and snow squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save Inseon's bird - 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 which awaits her at her friend's house.
We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination, and above all a powerful indictment against forgetting. These beautiful pages form much more than a novel - they illuminate a traumatic memory, buried for decades, that still resonates today.