We Do Not Part

Winner of the Prix Medicis Etranger 2023
Finalist of the Prix Femina Etranger 2023
Shortlisted for the Prix des Inrockuptibles 2023
Translated into English by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
Like a long winter's dream, Han Kang's new novel takes us on a journey through contemporary South Korea and 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.
“A beautifully nightmarish fever dream of a novel that combines genuinely vital history with the creeping dread of a horror story and the magnetic word-for-word perfection of the best literary fiction. This is a truly prizeworthy and powerful novel: profound and strange and bursting with both fury and charm”
– Bea Carvalho, Stylist
“A complex and unsettling novel”
– Observer
“A haunting journey through the history of a South Korean family.”
– The Sunday Times
“We Do Not Part will cement [Han Kang’s] reputation as one of the voices of our times.”
– The Telegraph
"Han Kang. Behind these two syllables lies a novelist in the image of her latest translated work, We Do Not Part: fine, precise prose, with a poetry that willingly plunges into the fantastic, but sufficiently complex to conceal, beneath its praise of dreams and the imaginary, an implacable depiction of human cruelty."
– Le Monde
“The novel exudes Han Kang’s unique sensitivity—rich and poetic senses, quiet phrases, and thorough investigation of historical events.”
– YTN
“With thorough coverage, serene voices, poetic sensitivity, Han Kang gives us beautiful stories and sentences.”
– Chosun Ilbo
“In the images of calmly descending snow between light and darkness, the book tells the silent fight of living the time after the massacre.”
– Kyunghyang Shinmun
“The book reveals inhumanity and violence in human society, and also an ongoing pursuit and struggle for the love towards life and people. Sophisticated and beautifully written, Han Kang lets us face the historical tragedy in her powerful narrative.”
– Maeil Business News Korea