Interview: Han Kang, "The White Book"

Han Kan on her novel The White Book and the death of her sister 

‘Something in us that cannot be harmed or destroyed’

Han Kan caused a stir with her first novel, The Vegetarian. Now her third novel, The White Book, proves she is not a one-trick pony. Leaving behind the exuberance of her previous work, The White Book confronts the reader with category-defying prose. Is it a novel, a novella, a prose poem, poetry or philosophy?
The first pages may be slightly mystifying. The author informs the reader she has decided to write about white things and immediately starts listing them: a baby’s shirt, salt, snow, moon, rice, magnolias, ‘to laugh white’… etc. Abstraction and poetry are however firmly left behind, when the author reveals the biographical charge of the novel: her mother’s first child, a girl, died after two hours, one winter’s day. ‘Don’t die, please don’t die’, the mother keeps murmuring, but within the space of two pages, the life of the narrator’s elder sister is over.

Han Kan: ’The fifth chapter of my previous novel, Human Acts, was describing the impossibility of bearing witness, to the traumatic memory of torture, as a woman. The narrator struggled with her memories. In that chapter, another character is dying of cancer and the narrator is visiting her at night. I found the chapter where this happens different from the rest of the book. Maybe it was too painful for me, maybe I felt too close to the narrator. I had the impulse to distance myself from her pain, but because of that, I knew I had to rewrite the chapter. I gave her the last monologue in the final passage: Don't die, please don’t die. Those were the words my mother said to her first baby, in the two hours before she died.’
‘In the summer of 2013 I met my Polish translator. She visited Seoul while translating The Vegetarian, so we had some chats about translating. At the end of the conversation, she told me about the possibility of a residency in Warsaw, at the university where she teaches Korean religion. At the time I was deeply invested in writing Human Acts and I thought staying in another country would be nice once I had finished the book. I felt I needed it. So when she repeated her invitation, I agreed right away. As I was packing my things, a friend asked me: why Poland, why another country with a very sad history? But if I had been invited to any other country, I would have agreed too. I just wanted to stay somewhere else. Of course I vaguely knew about the history of the country, the Second World War... but only in Warsaw did I learn details about the history of the city and I realised that I arrived in a really tragic place. Almost 95% of it was destroyed in the Warsaw uprising. It was completely rebuilt, resurrected. I imagined the city as a metaphor for my elder sister.’

The core of the book is its second chapter, in which the narrator brings her sister back to life and gives her sister her own life. Kan writes vignette-like, short chapters, bringing all matter of white things to the fore and connecting them to death and the fragility of life. ‘There was no writing strategy. I discovered this form. I don’t know what form it is myself, but these 65 fragments were the right way to write this book, not the traditional narrative of certain novels.’
So the deceased sister walks through Warsaw, with the narrator’s experiences and memories. Little by little it becomes hard to separate the two and the reader witnesses a ghost walking through a world of white, of shimmering, ephemeral beauty and always the proximity of death. ‘My writing always goes along with my questions. In The Vegetarian I asked the question: can we embrace this world, with so much violence and beauty at the same time? Is a total refusal of violence even possible? In Human Acts I wanted to move forward that same question: how to understand human dignity against human violence? The new book is written right after Human Acts and the theme of human dignity was still with me. This time I wanted to look at something in us that cannot be hurt or destroyed or harmed anyhow — and maybe we can call that something white.’

The fragments veer from autobiography and concrete observations to profound philosophy, about the fragility of the human body and the tenacity of life. At one point Kan writes: ’She considered it a strange but happy accident that a person consists of something else than meat and muscles.’
‘My impression is we can’t divide body and mind. If I want to depict pain, I find myself depicting physical pain. That comes natural to me. As for fragility… Violence is omnipresent in the world and throughout history. I question this theme of violence in my work.’
Could there be a connection with the ever-present danger of North Korea, so close-by and so eager to invade South Korea? ‘If I tried to find a relation with the situation in my country… I can see the connection, even though I feel the theme of violence is universal. South Korea has faced this situation for a long time. The war has not ended, it has just ceased for more than sixty years. There is always the possibility of war but we have to live on, live our everyday life. Everything goes on, every day. We have had to develop this contradiction between tension and daily indifference. Even when we receive critical news, the next day we have to get up and go to school, open a bookshop. Moreover, not only North Korea, but also forces like US, Russia, China, Japan... are surrounding us with tension. So I can say the tension is internalised.’

The Vegetarian gave Han Kan an international audience. Does it make her feel she has to explain her culture more, knowing not everyone will be familiar with it? In the final chapter of The White Book, she mentions a traditional pre-marriage ceremony: the parents exchange clothes (silk clothes for the living, cotton for the dead). These for the dead are then burnt. In the novel, the ritual also functions as a final goodbye to the deceased baby.
‘I never try to portray Korean society in my books. This may come out wrong, but when I write I don’t think that much about readers. The communication is between me and the book: will I be able to finish it, will I reach the image of the book I had in my head when I started it. I go back and forth between hope and doubt. Besides, I simply can’t imagine an international audience.’ (laughs)
Has this novel changed the way her local audience perceived her?
‘A lot of people are aware the book has autobiographical content, but it isn’t perceived as a memoir. The innovative form has received attention.’
Indeed. While this touching, sometimes achingly beautiful book is original in any language, it may be even more outlandish in South Korea, where literary life comes with a set of rules. For instance: a debut isn't supposed to be a novel. First a writer has to produce short fiction.
‘Until many years ago, every writer followed that path, yes. It is because of literary magazines. They are very strong in my country. First you want to publish short stories in those magazines. The last years we’ve had some writers who turned to the novel directly. It is still considered quite special.’

Returning to The White Book, the author points out yet another aspect. ‘Let’s not forget there is a political element as well, for instance in the description of the candles lit for the people who were executed during the war. That is connected to a massacre in Korea as well.’
One of the amazing things about The White Book is indeed how tiny observations and short fragments somehow add up to a story that encompasses the entire globe and all of history. Most importantly, it meanders constantly between beauty and brutality. ‘In the final chapter I come back to Korea, which is also where I wrote the final chapter. If my sister is alive, I cannot be alive, I could not be born. And if I am alive, it means she wasn’t able to live her life. Because of that, I had to bid farewell to her. That is what happens at the end: not a simple goodbye, but I breathe her last breath — and therefore the end is life-affirming.’

Han Kang, The White Book.
Granta Books, circa 150 pages, circa € 10


Ik interviewde Han Kang voor het Nederlandse boekenmagazine Livre. De Nederlandse versie van deze tekst verschijnt in nummer 3. Er is ook een Nederlandse vertaling van Han Kangs indrukwekkende boek: Wit. Verschijnt op 14 november bij uitgeverij Nijgh & Van Ditmar.