This feels like a culmination of Kang's work to date. Echoes of Human Acts, The Vegetarian, and The White Book create a feeling of isolation, cold, and the lines between reality and dream. Han Kang is a true master of her craft, weaving metaphors and imagery together seamlessly to tell the story of Jeju 4:3. This book does have a sporadic storytelling style that switches between historical, thriller, literary, and so on, but maintains the metaphors and imagery that create a cohesiveness as a whole. I would recommend this for anyone who has read Kang before, but for those new to the author, I would recommend reading The Vegetarian and Human Acts before to have an extra layer of understanding to this book.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang, translated by Emily Yae Won and Paige Aniyah Morris, is an intimate and profoundly moving exploration of love, memory, and trauma. Through the interconnected lives of three women, Han delicately uncovers the shadows of Korea's dark history, particularly the Jeju uprising and its aftermath. The narrative blends dreamlike sequences with reality, a style that might initially seem disorienting but ultimately captivates with its poetic depth. Though painful in its portrayal of historical atrocities, the novel is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, showcasing love, friendship, and the pursuit of truth. Han's elegant and accurate handling of historical trauma sheds light on long-suppressed events, offering both a poignant literary experience and a vital historical reckoning.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my free digital ARC of the latest Han Kang novel to be translated into English! Very exciting after she won the Nobel Prize this year, and I feel like this book really does encapsulate why she won, even if I *personally* wouldn’t consider it a perfect novel. This book delves deep into the tragic history of the Jeju uprising and the massacres that then took place and were shamefully covered up by the Korean government for a LONG, long time.

It can be a bit tricky to follow (don’t recommend reading it during the holidays when you’re easily distracted like me!), as it jumps around in time and perspective, splicing historic record with the present day narrative.

I was loving it to begin with - Kyungha receives a message from a friend who’s been hospitalised after a carpentry injury, asking her to go and take care of her bird while she recovers. Kyungha begins the arduous journey through treacherous weather to Inseon’s house, where dreamlike mirages begin to occur - I’m still not fully certain I understood everything that was going on, but it was certainly moving.

The language was always gorgeous, translated by E Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. Definitely do try and read it in wintertime, as the imagery is stunning.

2025 will be the year I also finally read the rest of Kang’s backlist, since I’ve only read this one and The Vegetarian YEARS ago 👀

A winter novel through and through. I was specifically taken with the first half of this novel, the bus journey through the snowy landscape is just very compelling in a quiet way.

The second half is delves more into historical events through a personal lense, this part is very harrowing.

Between 1948 and 1950 an estimated 30,000 inhabitants of the small Korean island of Jeju were murdered as part of a scorched earth policy to eradicate presumed Communist rebels on the island. Entire villages within an established perimeter were burnt down and men, women and children executed on beaches and in caves.

For decades, the government-led massacre was swept under the carpet, but since the early 2000s a truth commission has carried out an independent investigation and the horrible facts have been documented and brought to light.

Han Kang takes on the difficult task of fictionalising the 'Jeju massacre', and she pulls it off. 'We Do Not Part' is not a historical novel though, it retains Han Kang's unique style, playing with dreams and supernatural elements and also the vivid descriptions of excruciating pain and cruelty.

As in The Vegetarian and Human Acts we have a female protagonist, Kyungha, unable to cope with the demands of normal life. One day, Kyungha receives a call from her artist friend, Inseon, who needs her help urgently - she has sown off her fingers. The second half of the novel is more engaged, as it largely describes the massacre by way of presentating the research carried out by Inseon and discovered by Kyungha.

I found it really beautifully done - the snowy, dreamlike island with its silent secrets and the friendship between the two women struggling to find a way to recover and remember.

I have been putting this book off because I love Han Kangs other books but at the same time find them quite hard going. She’s very descriptive and really shows the reader what she wants to be seen.
I probably enjoyed this novel more than Kangs others with great characters and storyline.

This is my first Han Kan book and I will definitely be reading all of the others that are published in English. The writing was beautiful and the descriptions of place, the setting, the snow was lyrical and haunting. The tale of friendship and memory was stunning and I could not put this book down. A simple story to follow but it packs a punch which more on the history of the island. I really recommend this one.

Here is another one of Han Kang's books that inspires a passionate review and recommendation, but leaves me gripped with mournful introspection.

We Do Not Part is an ode to friendship, sisterhood, motherhood, and the circular remembrances that connect us to both suffering and survival. The book is divided into three parts, detailing (on the surface) the story of a troubled young woman who travels to Jeju Island to save her injured friend's beloved pet bird, and ends up unpacking the gruesome circumstances of the Jeju 4.3 Massacre of 1948. Han Kang is well-versed in recounting tragedies and massacres that are forgotten by history (at least outside Korea) in beautiful, poetic, evocative prose. Her writing goes beyond evocative to hypnotic in this work, with the veil between reality and dreams drawn back in an experimental narrative that could have become nonsensical quickly but ended up poignant as it tied together all the threads of the story. Ultimately, the story pierced through my heart, and I know this is one I would go beyond recommending to others. I know I will reread this someday and try to divine meaning through its superbly translated text again.

4.5/5 stars rounded up. A compelling read, repetitive at times, hard-hitting at times. I might like this better than Human Acts, and both can be read as companion novels. No wonder these novels resulted in a Nobel for the author.

I found this book extremely difficult, which is an insane way to start a book review... I really did.

I have been in awe of Han Kang for a few years, ever since I stumbled upon The Vegetarian. I'm also a huge fan of Human Acts - but my favourite by far is the White Book. The day I received the ARC for this book was the day Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She truly, truly deserves it. When I said this book is difficult, I truly meant it. You can choose to read this book on the surface level but then you are pulled into the deep metaphors, the heart-breaking imagery and the echoes of history.

I don't want to say much more because I'll spoil it. I found this book hard. It makes us confront difficult parts of history and makes us deal with grief in a way that not author has ever done previously.

Why do you read? I read to travel—both geographically and through time. Sometimes, it’s to escape, to immerse myself in lives that will never be mine. Other times, it’s to revisit places I’ve experienced or periods of my life that a novel can cast in a new light. I enjoy learning something new about the world we live in and the lives we lead. Han Kang’s novel achieves this in spades. Reading it opened my eyes to historical events I knew nothing about and transported me to the cold, snowy landscapes of rural Korea.

The story begins when the narrator is summoned to the hospital bedside of her old friend Inseon, with the intriguing instruction to bring her identity card. From there, she is sent on a mission to feed Inseon’s bird—a task that sets her on a journey through harsh weather and rugged terrain, while gradually unraveling the story of Inseon’s mother and the harrowing experiences of the Jeju islanders in the 1950s. The novel explores the bonds that hold us together: friendship, family, love, memory, and the pervasive ripples of history.

Han Kang’s writing immerses the reader in the cold and snow of Korea’s island landscapes. While I usually enjoy footnotes, it is a mark of the quality of the translation that I didn’t find myself missing them here. Korean terms are mostly within the text, and Google came to my aid for the ones that weren‘t. Actually, this novel has set me off on a internet rabbit hole, reading all about the history of Korea. I imagine the horrifying historical events Han Kang depicts are widely known in Korea, but I was completely unaware of them. This book made me acutely conscious of my ignorance about the Korean War and the atrocities committed by the South Korean government, frequently with U.S. support.

This is a novel I’d recommend to lovers of literary fiction and historical fiction alike.

One of those books that feels impossible to give an arbitrary rating to. On the one hand, Kang has written an incredibly deft novel about the Jeju Massacre in 1948, on the other, she has written an abstract novel that reads like sand falling through your fingers. Considering the novel's 400 page weight, there's not much to be said about where the pages go: a large swathe of the novel details the narrator waiting at a bus stop in a snowstorm, then walking through the snow, in the attempt to save her friend's budgie. The final hundred pages or so details the dreamlike investigation into her friend's family history and the Jeju Uprising. It is a book full of quiet but poignant images: a budgie hushing as soon as a cover is thrown over its cage, endless snowfall, shadows moving on walls, logs of wood painted black, a bus crawling through the snowstorm, missing fingers... These images all drift, like a snowstorm itself, and carry us through the incredibly weightless narrative. Like the movie planned but never made, the novel reads like an assortment of slides or images, hauntingly quiet, that flicker before your eyes. I can't say I 'liked' the book; I was unnerved by it, sometimes confused by it, but ultimately impressed by Kang's ability to write a novel about this diabolical historical event in a seemingly directionless and airy narrative. What persists in my mind most of all are the black logs standing in the snow, the shadows on the walls and the silencing of a bird.

Thank you to Penguin for the advance copy for review. We Do Not Part is published in English in the UK in February 2025.

The story it's dark and in some parts quite graphic but it's all part of the story. The writing style is beautiful and it just pulls you in the story and it haunts you.

Interesting and riveting.

Going to be the subject of my February newsletter to coincide with the release. I will share that when it is published.

Absolutely excellent book, and Han Kang just keeps on shining. Deeply thematic and made me think a lot

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for my ARC.

This is my second Han Kang novel, and I am still undecided if her work is for me, having previously read Greek Lessons and feeling not much at all. Don't get me wrong, the writing is gorgeous, I just feel like a lot of it goes over my head and can sometimes be difficult to follow. I am very undecided about this book personally, but I know this will be right up a lot of people's streets.

Like the first time I had kimchi, I tried it but didn't love it. I was fortunate to read an advanced copy of *We Do Not Part* by Han Kang. This was my first experience with Korean literature. I enjoyed recognizing the overlapping sentiments and the crazy, spontaneous things we do for our loved ones. I also appreciated learning about an important period in Korean history and some of the events that occurred on Jeju Island. However, the style of the book began to feel too artistic for me. The transitions were designed to feel ethereal and ghostly, but they came across as overly nebulous and whimsical. Ultimately, it was interesting but not to my taste.

Nobel Prize winner returns with "We Do Not Part," a fictionalised examination of the horrors of the Jeju Massacre. Kang tells the story of the massacre through the friendship of two women: Kyungha and Incheon who suffers in the hospital after her fingers are sliced off. She asks Kyungha to check on her bird who has been left alone. Through Kyungha's journey back to Incheon's home, Kang slowly unfurls the connection between the incomprehensible cruelty of the massacre and its aftermath with current day events.

The novel exhibits Kang's humanistic approach to her characters and the story. Kyungha wants to make sense of Incheon's family history, and how generations of violence are visited upon the present. Kyungha has to retrace Incheon's footsteps, and discover/assemble all the parts of Incheon's family history. The Korean families on Jeju Island are burdened with the cruelty and viciousness of the past, and the families must cope with never knowing what has happened to their loved ones. They are left to go on with their lives, but they remain stuck in the past because the past can rarely be resolved.

Kang explores how narratives are created around these horrific events. The governments want to pretend they didn't happen, and the families have to concoct narratives of hope because they do not want to believe that their family members have been kidnapped, tortured, and/or murdered. As a filmmaker, Incheon uses film to understand the meaning behind suffering, war, and the emotional toll of witnessing such events. She also must come to terms with her relationship with her mother, and how the war and massacre impacted their bond.

The novel is ultimately about reclaiming the past and the lost loved one who never got to decide the end to their story. It's about reconciling one's own future with those relatives who had no future. Han Kang's "We Do Not Part" is a beautifully written and emotionally shattering journey through the generations of victims who suffered and continue to suffer because of systematic and intentional violence.

I read Han Kang’s The Vegetarian a good few years ago, and I remember being haunted by it long after I’d finished it, even if the finer details of the plot now evade me. As such, I was delighted to receive an advanced reading copy of We Do Not Part, especially after the author’s recent Nobel Prize win: a well-deserved recognition of her unique voice in contemporary literature. I finished the book a few days ago, and honestly, I’m still contemplating how I feel about it. Perhaps this is the point?

For me, We Do Not Part was a book of two halves. On one hand, Kang’s writing is exquisite: delicate and immersive, with a quiet strength that’s wonderfully captured by translators e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. I enjoyed the small, poignant details that paint the daily existence of two women living in mainland Korea and on Jeju Island. Each setting feels rich, and Kang’s eye for detail breathes life to these places. The prose itself is stunning and was what ultimately kept me reading on even when the plot lost me.

While I was completely drawn in by the writing, I found the plot disappointing. There are a number of threads - like the recurring imagery of birds, or the enigmatic old woman at the bus stop - that felt like they were meant to signify something profound, but their purpose ultimately flew over my head (pun not intended). Perhaps these were metaphors for aspects of grief, or symbols tied to Korean folklore or history, but they were too ambiguous for me to make sense of and left me feeling a bit frustrated and confused. I kept waiting for these elements to reveal themselves and offer some kind of revelation or resolution, but they remained unresolved.


The book’s latter half shifts focus to the Jeju Island uprisings and the massacres that ensued, and here, Kang’s writing is haunting, explicit and completely heartbreaking. She conveys the weight of this historical trauma with the same precision and care that defines her work, and there are passages that are extremely powerful. That being said, I couldn’t quite see how they served the novel’s larger narrative. To me, it felt like two separate books: one exploring female friendship and memory, and another that details the violent history of Jeju (perhaps this should have been a non-fiction book instead?). Both stories are compelling, but I’m not sure they came together cohesively, and the combination left me feeling flat.

There’s no doubt that Han Kang is a masterful writer, and her Nobel Prize is a testament to her literary prowess and bravery in tackling difficult subjects. Her prose alone makes We Do Not Part worth the read. Sadly, for me, this novel missed the mark, perhaps by trying to do too much in too short a space.

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Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley UK for the advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

When Inseon has an accident in her isolated home, she's lucky to survive the blood loss and make it to a hospital in Seoul. From there she contacts Kyungha, the narrator of this story, and sends her on a mission to rescue Ama - Inseon's pet bird.
What follows is the tender unravelling of a story - a dark history that haunts both Inseon and Kyungha, and the deepening link between the pair, reinforced by shared trauma.

This novel was both dark and gruesome, with graphic detail of death and injury, whilst also being lyrical and poetic. A difficult balance to strike but Han Kang manages it so well. It's hard to say much more without giving away too much...

Although this isn't my usual genre to read, I still thoroughly enjoyed the book, even though some parts were challenging to process and complicated to understand the timeline and the narrator. I think that knowing some historical context would have helped a lot with this though. If you enjoyed The Vegetarian, you're sure to like this one too.

I loved The Vegetarian and didn’t think I’d find anything quite so unique again but I was wrong! This was absolutely perfect in every way and I am going to use this as part of my students curriculum! Fast becoming my favourite author now! Brilliant!