By Woo Jae-yeon
Han Kang, the acclaimed South Korean author, has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for her 2021 novel, “We Do Not Part,” translated into English in 2024. The award was presented at the NBCC’s annual awards ceremony in New York on Thursday night.
David Ebershoff, vice president and editor-in-chief of Hogarth and executive editor of Random House, delivers an acceptance speech on Han Kang’s behalf at the National Book Critics Circle’s annual awards ceremony held in New York on March 26, 2026, in this captured image from the NBCC’s YouTube channel.
Heather Scott Partington, the NBCC’s fiction committee chair, lauded “We Do Not Part” as “a work of blinding melancholy, bleak weather, and murmuring syntax.”
She further described it as “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.”
Due to her absence, David Ebershoff accepted the award on Han Kang’s behalf and read her acceptance speech.
Han Kang thanked those “who helped me while I wrote this book over seven years,” and shared a sentiment from the book: “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 concluded, “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.”
“We Do Not Part” explores themes of trauma and resilience through the lens of the Jeju massacre of 1948, focusing on three women affected by the tragedy.
The Jeju uprising began on April 3, 1948, as a protest against U.S. military-led rule, but was suppressed by the South Korean government, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.
The novel’s protagonist, Jung-shim, embodies resilience in the face of historical tragedy, never ceasing her grieving and farewells, which Han Kang identifies as the heart of the book.
The French edition, “Impossibles adieux,” previously garnered France’s Prix Medicis for foreign literature in 2023 and the Emile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature in 2024.
Han Kang, who began her literary career as a poet in 1993, has spoken about the challenges of writing “We Do Not Part.”
“It took me seven years to finally complete the story, and when I did that, it was the happiest moment for me,” she stated at a press conference on Nov. 14, 2023, upon winning the Prix Medicis.
She aimed to explore more personal themes after focusing on historical events in previous works.
“I’ve had enough of feeling cold, as it snows so much in ‘We Do Not Part.’ I would like spring to come,” she said.
Reflecting on life, she shared: “Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be alive. We are given this one-off life as a gift, whether we like it or not, and must eventually return it. I want to develop the idea of being alive and write about spring.”
The National Book Critics Circle, established in 1976, recognizes outstanding books published in English across six categories: fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography, poetry, and criticism.
Last year, Kim Hye-soon became the first Korean to win an NBCC award, receiving the poetry prize for “Phantom Pain Wings.”
Han Kang’s win marks the second consecutive NBCC award for a Korean writer in translation and the first translated work to win the fiction prize.
