This month we will be reading

We Do Not Part by Han Kang (Translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris)

This new novel from Han Kang, winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature,
tells the story of friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning
with a hidden chapter of Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to
visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she
begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a
white bird called Ama.

A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house
at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She
wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold
that envelops her with every step.

Lost in a world of snow, she doesn;t yet suspect
the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.
Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully
illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light
the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring
friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the
face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.
(Penguin Random House)
Hogarth, 272 pp, 2025
An excerpt of the novel, Heavy Snow, appeared in The New Yorker in November,
2024
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/11/18/heavy-snow-fiction-han-kang

We hope you can join us to discuss this extraordinary novel.