We Do Not Part – Kang Han (2026)

Han Kang’s haunting and visionary novel follows Kyungha as she travels from contemporary Seoul into the forests of Jeju Island to visit her old friend Inseon. Hospitalized after an accident, Inseon has begged her to hurry there and feed her beloved pet bird, which will otherwise die. Kyungha takes the first plane to Jeju, but a snowstorm strikes the island as soon as she arrives, immersing her in a world of white. Battling icy winds and snow squalls, she wonders whether she will reach the bird in time, or even survive the terrible cold surrounding her with every step. As night falls, she struggles towards Inseon’s house, unaware of the darkness awaiting her there. Inseon’s long-buried family history emerges through dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, as well as through a painstakingly assembled archive documenting a terrible massacre on the island seventy years earlier. A hymn to friendship and a eulogy to the imagination, the novel is above all an indictment of forgetting. Han Kang is the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. Translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris.