Book Description
“[Han Kang writes in] intense poetic prose that . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—from the Nobel Prize citation

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE • A “formally daring, emotionally devastating, and deeply political” (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of personal grief through the prism of the color white, from the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian

“Stunningly beautiful. . . one of the smartest reflections on what it means to remember those we’ve lost.”—NPR

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, Han Kang’s The White Book is a meditation on color, as well as an attempt to make sense of her older sister’s death, who died in her mother’s arms just a few hours after she was born.

In captivating, starkly beautiful language, The White Book is a letter from Kang to her sister, offering a multilayered exploration of color and its absence, and of the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit.
 
About the Author and Translator
Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. She is the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the International Booker Prize, as well as Human Acts, The White Book, Greek Lessons, and We Do Not Part. In 2024, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
 
Deborah is a literary translator specialising in contemporary Korean fiction, and a publisher. She was born in Doncaster in 1987, and began learning Korean in 2010. Her translations include three books by Han Kang – The Vegetarian, Human Acts and The White Book – and four by Bae Suah – A Greater Music, Recitation, North Station, and Untold Night and Day.
In 2015 Deborah founded Tilted Axis, a non-profit press focusing on translations from Asian languages, and which has published 16 books and 4 chapbooks as of early 2020.
These days she is taking time out to think about new ways of supporting translation as an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist practice. Currently in the works are a mentoring scheme, an anthology, and a climate-related project provisionally titled understories. She is nomadic, spending part of each year in Seoul, and has spent most of her life in South Yorkshire.