Collection: The White Book

The White Book (흰 - Hin) is a hauntingly poetic and meditative novel by Han Kang, winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2018, it is one of her most deeply personal and experimental works.  

Written while Han Kang was on a writer’s residency in Warsaw, Poland, the book is structured as a collection of 65 short, lyrical prose pieces—each titled after a white object (such as Swaddling Clothes, Salt, Snow, Rice, Moon, and Shroud).

The narrator reflects on the brief life of her older sister, who died in her mother’s arms just two hours after being born. The narrator realizes that if her sister had survived, she herself would never have been born. Immersing herself in Warsaw—a city rebuilt from the white ashes of World War II—the narrator offers these 65 white reflections as a ritualistic "bandage" or shroud for the sister she never knew, exploring how grief, memory, and rebirth coexist.