Dashiel Carrera at the LARB:
SOUTH KOREAN WRITER Han Kang is perhaps best known for her 2007 novel The Vegetarian, a violent, evocative work that led to her 2024 Nobel Prize win. But hiding in plain sight has been her 2016 masterpiece The White Book, whose English translation by Deborah Smith was recently reissued in paperback by Hogarth. An experimental, autobiographical novel, The White Book contains profound insights about the nature of grief and color that—like so many overlooked novels—are devilishly difficult to describe. But by digging into the novel’s poetic logic with an ear tuned to sound and silence, we can begin to tease it out.
The White Book opens as a meditation on color: “Swaddling bands / Newborn gown / Salt / Snow / Ice,” and so on. This list of white objects quickly becomes a sequence of chapter headings, each paired with a brief, pseudodiaristic reflection. At first glance, such a text appears akin to Maggie Nelson’s Bluets (2009)—likewise circuitous and fragmented, intertwining the philosophical with the personal to achieve a literary conception of color.
more here.
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