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The White Book feels as if it is being whispered: each paragraph seems to come from some deep and interior place Han Kang wrote it whilst living in Warsaw, though in the book the city is never named explicitly Instead it is only a white city, white for its snow and white for its stone ruins In an interview with Granta, Kang said that when writing this book, she imagined her prematurely dead sister had lived and visited the city ‘in my place’   Photographs are interspersed throughout In some, a woman appears, her face obscured by shadow In others, only her hands are visible She holds a child’s gown She holds a pebble-like object covered in salt The photographs are of white objects, but in contrast to the white pages, they are startlingly grey The specks and splashes of whiteness are surrounded by shadow The woman seems trapped in darkness Who is this woman supposed to represent? The narrator? The ghost of the sister? The novelist Kang? All or none of the above?  The literal answer is that they are photographs of a performance by Kang, shot by the photographer Choi Jinhyuk But within the pages, they seem to carry the spirit of characters — and the novelist herself   The text is a loose collection of thoughts, scenes, and images Few are longer than a page They are gathered into three sections — ‘I’, ‘She’, and ‘All Whiteness’ ‘I’ follows the narrator considering the colour white and describes her sister’s passing ‘She’ imagines the sister’s life Some subsections describe what the sister might have done—having an X-ray, finding a pebble, attempting to befriend a dog Others contemplate white things—seagulls, a dead butterfly, a lace curtain   Both ‘I’ and ‘She’ are pensive and slightly sorrowful At first, this similarity is disorienting: it is hard to see where one perspective ends and the other begins Slowly, the reader realises that this muddling is the point The concern of the narrator is not whether the sister would have been a vastly different person, but what it means to replace one life with another Her mother would not have

Hal stands in front of the screen On the screen the words GANDALF GOES EAST   GO EAST, types Hal   The cursor flashes   BILBO GOES EAST, the screen says   The cursor flashes   Another line of text appears: GANDALF GOES WEST, it says   Hal clenches his hands once, twice He cannot progress in the game without Gandalf GO WEST, he types   The cursor flashes   BILBO GOES WEST, the screen says   Ben comes into the room and walks over to Hal He reads the words on the screen from top to bottom:   GANDALF GOES EAST   GO EAST   BILBO GOES EAST   GANDALF GOES WEST   GO WEST   BILBO GOES WEST   GANDALF GOES EAST   Hal turns to Ben How are you? Hal says   Ben stares at the screen   Stay, says Ben   How are you? Hal says again He sounds uncertain   It’s ‘stay’ says Ben Type ‘stay,’ Hal   Hal types STAY   GANDALF ARRIVES!   The cursor flashes   GO WEST, types Hal He laughs and looks at Ben   BILBO GOES WEST read the words on the screen   Ben stares at Hal as the cursor flashes   Hal turns his back on Ben and goes to the window, a red smear of light He shields his eyes against the fleeing sun How are you? he asks A woman enters with a guitar, singing Hal and Ben go east, into their neighbours’ flat The woman follows, still singing Hal and Ben see their friend Michael asleep on the couch His mouth is hanging open, his body twisted, as if he has fallen from the sky Hal and Ben shout to wake him up Michael shouts back when he opens his eyes and sees them standing above him He was dreaming of murderers and for a moment these two are the people in his dream Then he notices the cushion Hal is holding tightly to his body, and he realises who they are   Hey, how’s it going? says Michael He rubs his eyes   How are you? Hal says, smiling   Ben moves away He stands beside the singing woman and pulls a face What’s all this singing about? he says The woman ignores him and shifts her voice into a higher register The song has arrived at a moment of tension The woman has tears on her face Ben regrets the way he spoke