Spanning 172 pages, Han's new collection includes around 10 essays and poems, including the Nobel lecture. Photo: AFP
South Korean writer Han Kang is set to release her first new book since receiving the Nobel Prize in literature in 2024.
The essay collection, titled Light And Thread, will be available in South Korean bookstores starting April 24, according to publisher Moonji Publishing.
The book takes its title from Han’s Nobel lecture, which she delivered at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on Dec 7.
Spanning 172 pages, the collection includes around 10 essays and poems, including the Nobel lecture.
An editor at Moonji Publishing described the new release as “a book that allows readers to enter the author’s quiet interior world – a calm, first-person universe”.
Roughly half of the content is being published for the first time, while the remaining texts have appeared in literary magazines.
Many of the prose pieces take the form of diary-like reflections, written while Han was tending her garden and composing poetry.
Besides essays, the collection features poems, including Meditation On Pain and North-Facing Room, both of which were published in the Fall 2024 issue of Moonji’s quarterly magazine, Literature & Society.
Light And Thread is expected to be Han’s only essay collection in circulation. Her previous non-fiction works – Quietly Sung Songs (2007) and Love And Things Surrounding Love (2009) – are out of print.
Meanwhile, Han is also putting the finishing touches on a long-awaited novel – the final instalment in what has been called her Winter Trilogy.
The new work is expected to be released in 2025 and will follow the short stories While A Single Snowflake Melts and Farewell.
Together, the three stories form an interconnected narrative. Han had been working on the final volume, a mid-length novel, before her Nobel win. – The Korea Herald/Asia News Network
