Nobel laureate Han Kang's novel 'We Do Not Part' has won the fiction prize from the US National Book Critics Circle (NBCC). The award was announced at the annual ceremony in New York on Thursday night US time. The book portrays trauma from the 1948 Jeju uprising.
The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) awarded its fiction prize to Han Kang's 'We Do Not Part' at its annual ceremony in New York on Thursday night US time, March 26. The novel, originally published in Korean in 2021 and in English translation in 2024 by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, marks another honor for the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature winner. NBCC fiction committee chair Heather Scott Partington described it onstage as 'a work of blinding melancholy, bleak weather, and murmuring syntax,' adding, 'A subtly rendered sketch of trauma in the wake of the Jeju massacre -- a rumination on creation and truth amidst loss. This artful novel lingers like an atmospheric, arresting dream.' Han Kang could not attend, so David Ebershoff, vice president and executive editor at Random House, accepted the award and read her speech. In it, she thanked 'everyone who helped me while I wrote this book over seven years,' noting, 'In this book, there are ones who have resolved not to bid farewell. Instead of an impossible farewell, they choose to stay within tenacious mourning, they light candles below the sea.' She added, 'In the pitch-black plunge of the night, I still hope to believe in the blinking light which we have in us, and to move forward, holding it with tenacity.' The book explores fragile yet resilient human life amid the 1948 Jeju uprising, a civilian massacre on April 3 protesting US military rule, mislabeled as a communist revolt and killing tens of thousands. Protagonist Jung-shim embodies perseverance. Its French edition 'Impossibles adieux' won France's Prix Medicis in 2023 and Emile Guimet Prize in 2024. Han debuted as a poet in 1993.
