London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

LKL book database logo

We Do Not Part

Author:
Translated by:
Publisher: , expected Jan 2025
Original title: 작별하지 않는다, 2021
Link to online store *

In her biggest book since The Vegetarian, the new novel from Han Kang tells the story of a friendship, taking us on a journey from South Korea into its painful history.

One morning in December, Kyungha receives a message from her friend Inseon saying she has been hospitalized in Seoul and asking that Kyungha join her urgently. The two women have last seen each other over a year before, on Jeju Island, where Inseon lives and where, two days before this reunion, she has injured herself chopping wood. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation, Inseon has had to leave behind her pet bird. Bedridden, she begs Kyungha to take the first plane to Jeju to save the animal.

A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and snow squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save Inseon’s bird–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 which awaits her at her friend’s house. There, the long-buried story of Inseon’s family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in the archive painstakingly assembled at the house, documenting a terrible massacre on the island.

We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination, and above all a powerful indictment against forgetting. Like a long winter’s dream, these beautiful pages form much more than a novel–they illuminate a traumatic memory, buried for decades, that still resonates today.

Source: publisher’s insta feed

Entry on Goodreads.com here.

* Where the book is available from a number of sources, they are prioritised as follows: (1) Amazon UK site, or Bookshop.org for the more recent uploads (2) Amazon US site (3) Other sites in US or Europe, including second-hand outlets (4) LTI Korea, where the title is advertised as available from there (5) Onlines stores in Korea. Links to Bookshop.org and Amazon UK site contain an affiliate code which, should you make a purchase, gives a small commission to LKL at no additional cost to you.