The White Book: A Novel

I am grateful for the enlightened and so accurate review of the White Book by "The Nowhere Man". And I am also glad that Amazon has chosen to list his comments as a "top critical review" for readers like me.The Nowhere Man proves to us in the most convincing way that the Korean writer named Han Kang has committed conceptual plagiarism of the work titled Bluets by the great Maggie Nelson who is widely read around the world. OK, Han Kang may have a point about her mother's mourning the loss of her first daughter a few hours after birth. But how can white as the color of morning in Korea possibly compare with American bluets? And what other woman besides the great Maggie Nelson would be able to spontaneously meditate about grief and loss in any meaningful way.How trite, girlish and irrelevant are Han Kang's references to the unnamed city of Warsaw that was levelled by Nazi armies following the 1944 Warsaw Uprising merely because she happened to finish her book in that city during dark and snowy winter days. What a weak reason for Han pretentious meditations on that unnamed city that pro-democracy demonstrations were crushed by the troops of a military dictatorship in the city of Gwangju where she happened to be borne by luck.The Nowhere Man is not a common bully but a respectable leader. He only has Han's best interests in mind - and ours - when he warns us about her obvious misdeed she committed when she wrote the "White Book".What a relief it is that the Booker Prize Committee did not give - again- its prestigious price in 2018 to this conspicuous plagiarist whose "White Book" it had made the embarrassing mistake to shortlist.Clearly, Han Gang who received her first literary prize when she was still a university student cannot think clearly, forcefully and independently by herself. Her entire work is so dull, repetitive and narrow.So typical of plagiarists, Han Kang has cleverly attempted to cover her tracks in a later interview given in Denmark when she says - without any evidence - that she has been struggling all her life with the "unresolved riddle" of the coexistence in humanity of violence and of dignity embodied in a sense of community. How laughable and selfish is her complain about men who rightly like to tell physically weaker women how to live their lives and what they can do because they always know what is best for them.The "Nowhere Man" could not have chosen a better target to campaign against the scourge of plagiarism than this uncreative writer who barely cares about human dignity and integrity. Maggie Nelson must surely agree with him. How shocking is the state of the writing world when such a weak and trivial writer receives 22 prizes in her native country as well as in the UK, France, Italy and Spain. What was the Nobel Committee thinking in 2024?Dear Amazon, congratulations again for your unerring choice of this "top critical review".

This is a remarkably different and profound meditation on consciousness, memory, stories, loss and remembrance. The "white" theme carries throughout the book's poetic chapters, which are often a short paragraph, never much more than a page. I confess that I wasn't happy with the book 2/3 of the way through. "The Vegetarian" was a powerhouse of writing, character-driven and mysterious. The White Book is almost characterless, in the sense of specific identities plodding their way through a narrative. And some, but not all, of the writing is strong. But the themes come through loud and clear: What does it mean to live? Can a baby who lives only briefly really be said to have lived, when she/he never acquires language or sees clearly or learns catalogues of lived experience? Can a person -- a sister -- relate to such an individual, when the condition of the sister's birth depended on the death of the first child? Can the sister know that late sibling in any profound way? Can she memorialize her? Substitute for her life? Can loss ever be transcended? From these and other questions posed about the transience of life and its meaning -- hardly a new literary category -- it's easy to see that this is a difficult book to bear. But it's very well done and creative; and, in contrast to the vividness of the protagonist in "The Vegetarian," the characters in "The White Book" are almost damask-white against the background of the themes themselves.

Like a series of photographs each of which is interesting on its own. The vignettes are expertly woven. But take a step back and see all these wonderful images and another larger image emerges, flickering, its presence uncertain at first and then becomes increasingly evident. What it shows might vary among readers but it will be profoundly human. And beautiful.

Poetic, interesting and pretty writing. Dark subject matter so make sure that’s what you want to read (why I rated lower)

…a brush with the whiteness of death painting a memory of a life only two hours long on the darkness of sadness.

This was like a teaser to a larger book. Appetizer to great literature to follow. Only reason for missing star is there is no deep plot.

It's perfect

Arrived in good condition & came earlier than expected