New essay collection 'Light and Thread' includes Nobel lecture, poems, intimate reflections
South Korean writer Han Kang is set to release her first new book since receiving the Nobel Prize in literature.
The essay collection, titled "Light and Thread," will be published later this month, available in 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 last Dec. 7.
Spanning 172 pages, the collection includes around 10 essays and poems, including this 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 previously appeared in literary magazines. Many of the prose pieces take the form of diary-like reflections, written while tending her garden and composing poetry.
In addition to essays, the collection features poems, including “Meditation on Pain” and “North-facing Room,” both of which were previously 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 currently in circulation. Her previous nonfiction works -- "Quietly Sung Songs" (2007) and "Love and Things Surrounding Love" (2009) -- are both out of print.
Meanwhile, Han is also putting the finishing touches on a long-awaited novel -- the final installment in her so-called “Winter Trilogy.” The new work is expected to be released later this year 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 midlength novel -- before her Nobel win.
hwangdh@heraldcorp.com
