February 2025 Book of the Month - Emma recommends... We Do Not Part - Han Kang

Emma recommends... Centred on a beautiful, enduring friendship, the exploration of which uncovers for the reader the facts of a series of civilian massacres in 1948 and 1949 that preceded the outbreak of the Korean War, We Do Not Part is an astonishing book that both gathers together and goes beyond Han Kang's previous work. Human frailty and resilience, the essential creative act, nightmares, snowfall and woodland landscapes - all is woven and layered through incredibly controlled, poetic prose, bringing a book that is both exquisite in its surrealism and essential in its telling of the past. A must read.

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Beginning one morning in December, We Do Not Part traces the path of Kyungha as she travels from the city of Seoul into the forests of Jeju Island, to the home of her old friend Inseon. Hospitalized following an accident, Inseon has begged Kyungha to hasten there to feed her beloved pet bird, who will otherwise die. Kyungha takes the first plane to Jeju, but a snowstorm hits the island the moment she arrives, plunging her into a world of white.

Beset by icy wind and snow squalls, she wonders if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the terrible cold which envelops her with every step. As night falls, she struggles her way to Inseon’s house, unaware as yet of the descent into darkness which awaits her. There, the long-buried story of Inseon’s family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in a painstakingly assembled archive documenting a terrible massacre on the island seventy years before.

We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination and above all an indictment against forgetting.

Translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris