Humanity has a funny relationship with history: We never quite know what to do with it. Let the past be the past, some say. If we don’t learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it, others counter. But history doesn’t care what we want; it will make its presence known, whether we like it or not.
That’s certainly the case in the Nobel laureate Han Kang’s new book, “We Do Not Part.”
The novel, which was translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, is a pet-sitting quest gone surreal. The story follows Kyungha, a writer and documentarian who is summoned to a hospital in Seoul by her close friend and former collaborator, Inseon. Inseon, it turns out, has sliced off her fingertips while working in her carpentry workshop. She’s now stuck in the hospital undergoing a painful treatment that will keep her bedridden for weeks. Worried about her pet parakeet, Ama, who was abandoned at home in the emergency and has most certainly run out of food, Inseon asks Kyungha to travel to her house and care for the bird.
The only issue? Inseon’s house is hundreds of miles away, on the island of Jeju, and there’s a blizzard barreling toward it that will soon cut off access to the area. Despite the perilous trip, Kyungha makes it, but once there, she doesn’t just find the bird. She also finds an apparition of Inseon, who has a devastating history to tell.
Transforming real life into a haunting dreamscape, “We Do Not Part” is about grief, tragedy, the weight of the past, and the painful but essential work of remembering, delivered by one of the most electrifying writers working today. (Han’s 2016 novel, “The Vegetarian,” won the International Booker Prize and was recently named one of The New York Times’s Best Books of the 21st Century.)
In March, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss “We Do Not Part,” by Han Kang. We’ll be chatting about the book on the Book Review podcast that airs on March 28, and we’d love for you to join the conversation. Share your thoughts about the novel in the comments section of this article by March 20, and we may mention your observations in the episode.
Here’s some related reading to get you started:
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Our review of “We Do Not Part”: “For those of us struggling to grapple with the overwhelming flow of news about current conflicts in other countries — including South Korea, where political turmoil is painfully reanimating the iron-gloved ghosts of its past — and the authoritarian threat unspooling in our own, ‘We Do Not Part’ is a chilling reminder of the terrible invisibility of people and events that are removed from us in space and time.” [Read the full review, by Lydia Millet, here.]
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The New York Times’s profile of Han Kang, pegged to the release of “We Do Not Part”: “Connecting dead memories and the living present, thereby not allowing anything to die off, that’s not just about Korean history, I thought,” Han said in an interview for the article. “It’s about all humanity.” [Read the full profile, by Victoria Kim, here.]
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Our news article when Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature: Han was awarded the prize in 2024 for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy said. Her win made her the first writer from South Korea to win the prize. [Read the full story, by Alex Marshall and Alexandra Alter, here.]
We can’t wait to discuss the book with you. In the meantime, happy reading!
The post Book Club: Read ‘We Do Not Part,’ by Han Kang, With the Book Review appeared first on New York Times.
