We Do Not Part

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR FOYLES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025

Like a long winter’s dream, this haunting and visionary new novel from 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang takes us on a journey from contemporary South Korea into its painful history

‘One of the most profound and skilled writers working on the contemporary world stage’ Deborah Levy

Beginning one morning in December, We Do Not Part traces the path of Kyungha as she travels from the city of Seoul into the forests of Jeju Island, to the home of her old friend Inseon. Hospitalized following an accident, Inseon has begged Kyungha to hasten there to feed her beloved pet bird, who will otherwise die.

Kyungha takes the first plane to Jeju, but a snowstorm hits the island the moment she arrives, plunging her into a world of white. Beset by icy wind and snow squalls, she wonders if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the terrible cold which envelops her with every step. As night falls, she struggles her way to Inseon’s house, unaware as yet of the descent into darkness which awaits her.

There, the long-buried story of Inseon’s family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in a painstakingly assembled archive documenting a terrible massacre on the island seventy years before.

We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination and above all an indictment against forgetting.

Translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris

‘A vital voice and a writer of extraordinary humanity. Her work is a gift to us all’ Max Porter

‘A remarkable novelist who reflects our modern condition with courage, imagination, and keen intelligence’ Min Jin Lee

LONGLISTED FOR THE WARWICK PRIZE FOR WOMEN IN TRANSLATION

'A masterpiece . . . We Do Not Part is both act of witness and a beautiful poetic object . . . It is a rare privilege to read a masterpiece so recently crafted, to know that the new prose you are reading (too fast!) will endure. We Do Not Part is an astonishing book' - Guardian

'Han Kang offers a devastating indictment of her country’s past . . . The novel conjures a dreamlike feel amid its potent tales of suffering and cruelty, all leading to a final section that is simply stunning. Han pulls off a masterful meditation on what it’s like to be assaulted by an “endless spew of blood-soaked memories”. In that finale, I was stopped short by the grace of one dazzling page, with its cascade of memorable images. These include a description of mental collapse as hundreds of fuses in one’s head blowing one by one, and a woman sleeping all day in a hospice, who reminds Khungha of “a sea where the high tide lasts forever”. Han ends her magnificent novel on a beautifully beguiling note' - Independent, ‘Novel of the month’

'With patience and acute insight, [Han Kang] explores both the breadth and brutality of human cruelty, and the profound capacity of our species for tenderness . . . We Do Not Part strikes a match in the darkness, insists on the strength of sisterhood, and makes us believe that even the smallest of lives, the pulse of a bird’s heart, should matter' - Financial Times

'Han’s work – itself a radical form of outreach and connection, an attempt to feel into the painful lives of strangers – is highly original and moving. Although she refuses to look away from human cruelty, it is her glimmers of hope that are most affecting . . . There is, perhaps, no novelist working today who seems so devoted to interrogating the epistemic problem of suffering' - New Statesman

'A courageous and gifted writer whose work has truly global resonance . . . [Han Kang’s] writing is nuanced, supple and precise' - Irish Times

'Bold and revelatory, disquieting and subversive, Han’s style is both spare and lyrical' - Guardian

'A chilling reminder of the terrible invisibility of people and events that are removed from us in space and time' - The New York Times

'Exquisite. Han’s radiant intensity, her singular ability to find connections between body and soul, and to experiment with form and style, are what make her one of the world’s most important writers' - Los Angeles Times

SPECIFICATIONS:

Author:Han Kang - Хан Канг

Publisher:Penguin

Language:English

Publication Date:2026

Number of pages:384 pst

Format:Paperback

Width:129 mm / 5,1'

Height:198 mm / 7,8'

Weight:500 g

ISBN:9780241997048