Penguin 2026. Paperback, 384 pp. New book
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 2024
Like
a long winter’s dream, this haunting and visionary new novel from 2024
Nobel Prize winner Han Kang takes us on a journey from contemporary
South Korea into its painful history. Beginning
one morning in December, We Do Not Part traces the path of Kyungha as
she travels from the city of Seoul into the forests of Jeju Island, to
the home of her old friend Inseon. Hospitalized following an accident,
Inseon has begged Kyungha to hasten there to feed her beloved pet bird,
who will otherwise die. Kyungha takes the first plane to Jeju,
but a snowstorm hits the island the moment she arrives, plunging her
into a world of white. Beset by icy wind and snow squalls, she wonders
if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the
terrible cold which envelops her with every step. As night falls, she
struggles her way to Inseon’s house, unaware as yet of the descent into
darkness which awaits her. There, the long-buried story of
Inseon’s family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from
mother to daughter, and in a painstakingly assembled archive documenting
a terrible massacre on the island seventy years before. We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination and above all an indictment against forgetting.