The White Book

THE WHITE BOOK: HAN KANG Book Review By Varghese V Deasia Han Kang is the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her novel The Vegetarian won the Man Booker International Prize, The White Book was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize, and her Human Acts won the Manhae Literary Award. Reading THE WHITE BOOK was a metanoia. The journey changed my mind, heart, self, and perception of existence related to events, persons, and faces. Its sillage, the scent that lingered in the air, and the trace of the perfume Han Kang has left for her readers are resonant. The epiphany the author created in me is a redamancy moment and a phosphenes experience. It took me to the land of the unknown, where I encountered inexplicable existential anxiety, anguish, sorrows, joy, and peace. I screamed for the hiraeth. In the end, I am rich with the solace of Han Kang’s eloquence in spreading her words and ideas. I cannot vouch for whether it is a novel, an anthology of short stories, a collection of poems, an assortment of invocations, an album of meditations, or a sequence of dreams. However, I can proclaim that The White Book is the ultimate example of profound literature, verisimilitude in nature, personal, gentle, passionate, agile, thriving, thrilling, complex, contextual, erotically spiritual, secular, neurotic, phenomenological, fearful, hauntingly intimate, universal, ethereal, challenging, agonising, amazing and astonishing. It leads the reader to meditate on the mysteries of existence, magics of relationships, joys of togetherness, contradictions in desires, passions in hope, sex in life, truth in death, whiteness in darkness, sunrise after sunset, thunder in rain, lightning in the clouds, collage of colours, war in power. It leads you to ponder love in the first meeting of would-be beloved, the first rays of the morning, peace in benevolent hearts, agony in longing, sadism in narcissism, madness in power, dishonesty of an ingrate, grief in loss, peace in Vipassana and warmth in a hug. THE WHITEBOOK reminds its readers about the intimate union of the individual with the Earth in myriad forms, colours, sounds, tastes, and the ultimate merging with the Universe. But there is grief in this merging, pain in this loss, and agony in its reminiscence. “My mother’s first child died, I was told, less than two hours into life. I was told that she was a girl with a face as white as a crescent-moon rice cake. Though she was very small, two months premature, her features were clearly defined. I can never forget, my mother told me, the moment she opened her black eyes and turned them toward my face.” THE WHITE BOOK shakes your heart with its impermeable grief. At the same time, it leads you to think about the mysteries of your awareness, epistemological oneness with the other, ontological search for a person you love, metaphysical togetherness with humanity, and the embrace of emotions and the author’s immeasurable compassion. It breathes within you and tells stories of empathy, love, and kindness. It touches you like the morning breeze over the rice-paddy fields, enveloping you with its eternal proximity. You wonder at the totality of the vastness of human feelings, especially love, honesty, and humility. You wonder about the universality of experiences, the sonder, and your involvement when meeting every stranger. Each human has a story of their own. Each stranger has a universe of their own. Every human we encounter has a mysterious, complex, fascinating and rich life as mine. “The twenty-two-year-old woman lies alone in her house. Saturday morning, with the first frost still clinging to the grass, her twenty-five-year-old husband goes up to the mountain with a spade to bury the baby who was born yesterday. The woman’s puffy eyes will not open properly. The various hinges of her body ache, swollen knuckles smart. And then, for the first time, she feels warmth flood into her chest. She sits up, clumsily squeezes her breast. First a watery, yellowish trickle, then smooth white milk.” THE WHITE BOOK is effervescent, iridescent, and luminous. The incandescence it creates while reading is like the strange wishfulness of a used library where you spent much of your life as a young person. You met your beloved in a corner of the library for the first time. You carry that vellichor for a lifetime. Even though there is an innate melancholy and sorrow, Han Kang creates, the reading is stupefying and, at times, ephemeral, along with the violence we indulge in, the cruelty we perpetrate, the shame we have inherited and the possible reprimands. “As I have imagined her, she walks this city’s streets. At a crossroads, she sees a section of red brick wall. In the process of reconstructing yet another shattered building, the wall had been taken down and rebuilt a metre in front of its original position, along with a low epitaph explaining that the German army used it to line up civilians and shoot them. Someone has put a vase of flowers in front of it, and several white candles are crowned with wavering flames.” Han Kang takes the reader to the dark corners of human intentions, behaviours, actions, and consequences. The jingling in those bends frightens them and leads them to their inner self to assess the pretensions nourished to show the world in its real colours, especially darkness, as Cardinal Newman says: “The night is dark, I am far away from home”. It permeates the heart, soul, mind, and head. History overpowers them, the present imitates the past to shadow it, and the future remains opaque. However, there is a longing for rebirth in THE WHITE BOOK, a spiritual spontaneity, like in the songs of Mira Bai about her beloved Krishna. The Chandogya Upanishad speaks about rebirth, also known as Punarjanma, the concept of the self’s return after death. This notion can be compared with "Ode to the West Wind" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, a poem that explores themes of death and rebirth, the power of the West Wind as a force that brings renewal. Han Kang uses rebirth as a sign of the transformative power of human life, suggesting that change can arise from destruction. As the Isha Upanishad says: “They who worship both body and the spirit, by the body overcome death, and by the spirit achieve immortality.” For the Taittiriya Upanishad, “What you give to others, give with love and respect.” The inherent spirituality in THE WHITE BOOK is dazzling with philosophical notions. “It was on the outskirts of the city that she saw the butterfly. A single white butterfly, wings folded on a reed bed, one November morning. No butterfly had been seen since summer; where could this one have been hiding? The air temperature had plummeted in the previous week, and it was perhaps on account of its wings frequently freezing that the white colour had leached from them, leaving certain parts close to transparent. So clear, they shimmer with the black earth’s reflection. Only a little time is needed now, and the whiteness will leave those wings completely. They will become something other, no longer wings, and the butterfly will be something that is no longer butterfly.” Han Kang’s writing is profound and representative, creating passions like Jayadeva’s Gitagovindam, magical and mystical like Tagore’s Gitanjali, erotically spiritual like that of St Teresa’s The Way to Perfection, permeating and philosophically perceptive like Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, mystically splendid and evocative as Rumi’s Masnavi, spiritually surrealistic as Dag Hammarskjöld's Marking: Poems and Meditations, and mystifying in fervent love as Song of Solomon. “When long days finally come to a close, a time to be quiet is needed. As when, unconsciously, in front of a stove, I hold my stiff hands out to the silence, fingers splayed in its scant warmth.” Death is inevitable. Death is the final song of life. But do we die? The memory of the dead person lives on like the baby girl's memory, inscribed in the author's mind, who was the firstborn to her parents. “Don’t die. For God’s sake, don’t die. I open my lips and mutter the words you heard on opening your black eyes, you who were ignorant of language. I press down with all my strength onto the white paper. I believe that no better words of parting can be found. Don’t die. Live.” Han Kang’s THE WHITE BOOK is one of the most enriching meditations ever. It is as profound as The Spiritual Exercise of Ignatius Loyola and on par with The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama or Hope by Pope Francis. “Within that white, all those white things, I will breathe in the final breath you released.” Deborah Smith translated THE WHITE BOOK into English from the Korean. The English translation reads like a mystifying poem: beautiful, enchanting, and enriching. The language is clear, concise, vivid, and reflects a strong, consistent voice. Varghese V Devasia Former Professor and Dean, TISS Mumbai Former Professor and Principal, MSSISW, Nagpur University, Nagpur.

Dieses Buch ist eine Meditation.

インテリア用として購入しました。オブジェを置くのにちょうど良いサイズと厚みがあり、色味も良く、又、書物としても写真がふんだんに掲載されていて見ごたえがあります。

Good price and quality

I have not finished the book, because it’s so wonderful I had to slow down to savour it more. Although some have called it self-indulgence on Author Kang’s part, I think the emotions expressed within 흰 are the kind that cannot be isolated from their owner. And because of that, I felt a perfect understanding with the author and the stories deeply touched my heart. Actually, someone I love very much who passed away last year read this book in its original Korean. As I am grieving for him now, I feel deeply connected and comforted by reading it. This book has moved me to tears, not by attachment to characters or by plot, but by the simple mode of expression which both stirs and soothes my grief. I believe it’s my first experience of the kind. I truly recommend this book to anyone softhearted, and especially anyone who has experienced deep grief.