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The White Book

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The White Book

By: Han Kang, Deborah Smith - translator
Narrated by: Jennifer Kim
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About this listen

From the author of The Vegetarian and Human Acts comes an audiobook like no other. The White Book is a meditation on colour, beginning with a list of white things. It is an audiobook about mourning, rebirth and the tenacity of the human spirit. It is a stunning investigation of the fragility, beauty and strangeness of life.

©2016 Han Kang (P)2019 Penguin Random House LLC
Asian Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Poetry World Literature

Critic reviews

'A brilliant psychogeography of grief, moving as it does between place, history and memory ... Poised and never flinches from serene dignity ... Translated seamlessly by Smith, The White Book succeeds in reflecting Han's urgent desire to transcend pain with language.' (Deborah Levy, Guardian)
'The White Book is a profound and precious thing, its language achingly intimate, each image haunting and true. It is a remarkable achievement. Han Kang is a genius.' (Lisa McInerney, author of The Blood Miracles)
'An astonishingly rendered work of fiction ... Precise, subversive, fierce and deceptively opaque ... A sublime expression of grief's incongruous byways, its busy inactivity, its larger, more elaborate intrusions.' (Catherine Taylor, Financial Times)
'[An] astonishing novel ... with such tenderness [that] incites us to examine our own experience and place in the world ... It's a profound piece of work [...] that is as much concerned with what is unsaid and omitted, as what is revealed ... Han's painful, exquisite story is a philosophical lament for all the shades of life.' (Sinead Gleeson, Irish Times)
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