The White Book

by Han Kang

The White Book is

South Korean writer

Han Kang’s third book to be translated into English. It carries a huge weight of expectation after Kang won last year’s Booker

Prize with The

Vegetarian. The White

Book is experimental to say the least.

Instead of any kind of coherent narrative, characterisation or plot, it is a meditation on the colour white. With only a few sentences on every second page, the unknown narrator explores objects and things that relate to the colour, while also sporadically reflecting on her older sister who died a few hours after being born. Kang evidently has a masterful turn of phrase, but this ultimately feels a little directionless and self-indulgent.