‘The Vegetarian’ writer and the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Han Kang has released yet another masterpiece.
We Do Not Part is a hauntingly poetic exploration of memories, trauma, and resilience. The novel follows Kyungha, a writer and Seoul resident, who travels to Jeju Island to visit her childhood friend, Inseon. Inseon encountered an accident that left her incapacitated forcing her to ask Kyungha to care for her beloved pet bird, Ama. As Kyungha arrives on the snow-covered island, she is drawn into the history of Jeju and its dark legacy of pain and loss.
The story intricately connects personal and collective trauma with a focus on the 1948 Jeju Massacre where lives were lost as the government tried to suppress an uprising. Through Inseon’s family story, the novel reveals the ripple of emotional damage that historical violence leaves through generations, shaping identities and lives.
The novel embodies poetic and evocative prose with a fusion of reality and dreamlike moments. The novel is filled with metaphors of buried memories and the passage of time. The story also highlights the need to confront painful histories, no matter how challenging as it fuses grief and survival through unrelenting past moments haunting the present. We Do Not Part showcases Han Kang’s ability to address profound human truths through resilience and remembrance.
—-Karen Mwenda
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