The White Book Summary
Han Kang

The White Book Overview

Set in Warsaw and Korea, Han Kang’s novel The White Book delves into what it means to be human and how to reconcile human life’s beauty with its chaos and uncertainty. Alternating between first and third person narration, the book describes a writer in a writer’s residence in Warsaw, Poland, as she contemplates white things and also what she heard about the death of her older sister. The novel explores themes of memory, language, the purity of nature, the fleetingness of beautiful things, and ambiguity and uncertainty.