The White Book – A Haunting Meditation on Loss and Rebirth

From the Man Booker International Prize-winning author of The Vegetarian comes a novel as luminous, poetic, and deeply introspective as freshly fallen snow.

While on a writer’s residency, a nameless narrator turns to the color white—a blank canvas for her grief. Through lyrical, interconnected vignettes, she explores the lingering shadow of her sister’s death, tracing sorrow through the whiteness of milk, snow, swaddling cloths, and empty pages. Each memory, each delicate image, unspools into an exquisite meditation on loss, renewal, and the ephemeral beauty of life.

"Certain things are beautiful only when they are distant."

As she lingers over fleeting moments—a baby’s first breath, the hush of a winter morning, the glow of a distant lighthouse—she grapples with the weight of absence, transforming it into something quietly powerful and achingly beautiful. Every sentence shimmers with melancholy and hope, fragility and resilience, capturing the delicate balance between what is lost and what endures.

In starkly mesmerizing prose, The White Book is a breathtaking, soul-stirring elegy, a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit, and a reminder that even in emptiness, there is a story waiting to be told.