A fortnight with Han Kang's magical words

Book title: We Do Not Part

Book author: Han Kang

Two weekends ago, we went to Aziz market to check out some backpacks and there was the bookstore, a proper bookstore with a hustle bustle of book business going on and I let myself indulge into it. I had no intention of buying anything, I told Samudro. Still, I asked someone "Do you have anything from Han Kang". Then this white colored hardcover caught my attention. I held it, it was sooo light. The typeface, spacing, touch of the paper—lovely. With a sheepish look I looked at Samudro "this is the last book I am buying in my life... for July 2024... trust me it's just the most beautiful cover and binding"... Samudro was laughing, he knew it, I can't be trusted, not even for July 2025.

I am reading Han Kang for the first time. Her novel is prose, giving off her poetic identity. She illustrates a room when a character enters there, she zooms in the snow, the clouds, the air that passes through... So rich she paints!

The “We” of the title “We Do Not Part” are a writer and a filmmaker. Their professional interests coincide. The subject of Kyungha’s writing is protests, while Inseon makes documentary films on human tragedies. Usually she incorporates nature and the surviving individuals' account of grief into composing her films. I could picture these films, these silent, grieving interviews floating so well in my head.

Kyungha starts to see nightmares after publishing her latest book. Like the genocide survivors of her book, she would wake up in the middle of the night, it seemed that the characters of her own creation started to grow inside her.

But I felt split in half. Even within those private moments, I could sense the shadow of the book lurking — when I turned on the gas ring and waited for the water in the pot to boil, in the brief time it took to dredge tofu slices in egg wash and watch them crisp up on both sides.

One day, Kyungha gets a message for her friend Inseon and rushes to meet her. Inseon urgently requests Kyungha to come to her home in Jeju Island, and the book slowly unearths the past of Inseon’s family.

In the second part of the book, the Jeju uprising’s long buried history starts to unravel. Through Kyungha’s delirium state, we get to know the grief of a Jeju family who lost their dear ones, who lived but burdened with pain. How to put the pain in words… Inseon never made any film on her own people’s tragedy

… I understand why Inseon denied any intentions of making a film about these events.

The smell of blood-soaked clothes and flesh rotting together, the phosphorescence of bones that have been decaying for decades will be erased. Nightmares will slip through fingers. Excessive violence will be removed. Like what was omitted from the book I wrote four years ago.

While I was reading the account of unearthing one’s history, it came to my mind again and again, what history are we leaving for the future. While I am reading this book, aren’t bullets dredging families, innocent people, in parts of the world? I was reminded of this line from Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness “What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature?”

I wish I could end the review with more messages of hope. I loved Han Kang’s writing, but I will take some time until I pick up another book from her, to have the courage to read about the violence against humanity.