We Do Not Part

Reviews / Votes

[Han Kang's] empathy for vulnerable, often female, lives is palpable, and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose . . . She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose -- Nobel Prize in Literature Committee 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 -- Anne Enright * 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 * One of the greatest living writers . . . She is a voice for women, for truth and, above all, for the power of what literature can be -- Eimear McBride 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 *