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.
