Impossibles adieux

Like a Long Winter’s Dream, this new novel by Han Kang takes us on a journey between contemporary South Korea and its painful history.
One December morning, Gyeongha receives a message from her friend Inseon. Inseon tells her she’s in the hospital in Seoul and asks her to come see her right away. The two women haven’t seen each other in over a year, since they spent a few days together on Jeju Island. That’s where Inseon lives, and it was there, two days before their reunion, that she severed two fingers while chopping wood. A neighbor and her son found her unconscious at home; they arranged for her to be transported to the mainland so she could undergo emergency surgery. The surgery went well—her index and middle fingers were successfully reattached—but Inseon’s white parrot did not make the trip with her and is at risk of dying if no one feeds it by the end of the day. Confined to bed, she is therefore asking Gyeongha to do her a huge favor by taking the first flight to Jeju to save the bird.