by The Booker Tea

We Do Not Part

“Hang Kang’s prose, as delicate as footprints in the snow or a palimpsest of shadows, conjures up the specters haunting a nation, a family, a friendship” — Hernan Diaz, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Trust

cover art of We Do Not Part

by Han Kang; translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris

Paperback (Hamish Hamilton, 2025)
ISBN ‎ 978-0241600269
240 pages

Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter in 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 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.

About the author

Han Kang is a South Korean writer known for her experimental fiction and works that address humanity’s capacity for violence. Born in Gwangju in 1970, she moved to Seoul at the age of nine. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University and began her literary career in 1993 as a poet. Her notable works include The Vegetarian, which won the International Booker Prize in 2016, Human Acts, The White Book, and Greek Lessons.​

In 2024, Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” ​

For more information about Han Kang and her works, you can visit her official website: https://han-kang.net.​

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