Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith, The White Book is a meditation on colour, beginning with a simple list of white things. It is a book about mourning, rebirth and the tenacity of the human spirit. It is a stunning investigation of the fragility, beauty and strangeness of life. The White Book is a fragmented autobiographical meditation on the death of the unnamed narrator’s baby sister, who died two hours after her birth. Han wisely gives as much value to those heightened two hours of life as she does to her death. The story of her birth, as narrated from the point of view of the mother, who is 22 when she is obliged to deliver the premature baby herself, is simply told.The book is structured around the white things that become part of the rituals of mourning and remembering. It is a mysterious text, perhaps in part a secular prayer book.