Light and Thread

What is love?
It is the gold thread connecting between our hearts.

In this light-filled and multi-faceted book, her first since being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Han Kang draws together the threads of her work and life, tracing the connections between her interior and exterior worlds through a sequence of essays, poems, photographs and diaries.

A book of reflections, of words and light, it has at its heart the tiny, north-facing courtyard garden at her home, cultivated solely through the reflected sunlight of the mirrors which she must move throughout the day, as the earth turns on its axis.

In a poem written at eight years old, Han Kang imagined a ‘gold thread’ of connection – an idea which she explores here with luminous attention, beginning with her Nobel Lecture. She writes of the wonder of following the thread we call language into the depths of other hearts, and her profound sense of an electric current which joins writer and reader.

Both intimate and illuminating, Light and Thread is a book for all readers of Han Kang’s unique body of work.

Review

The prolific South Korean author is back with her first book since winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 2025. In Light and Thread, Kang recalls a poem she wrote at eight years old in which she imagined that “gold thread” of connection, language. Here she uses that thread to tie together essays and poems, her life and her work, beginning with “Nobel lecture” in which the author discusses her writing process and the myriad questions that drive her work ― i Paper, '16 books to have on your radar in 2026'

About the Author

Han Kang (Author)
Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. In 1993 she made her literary debut as a poet and published her first short story in 1994. She won the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian and was shortlisted for The White Book. In 2024, Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life’.

Among other major awards and prizes she is the winner of the Prix Medicis Etranger 2023 for the French edition of We Do Not Part. She taught in the department of creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts for eleven years before leaving in 2018 to focus on writing. She is the fifth writer to contribute to the ongoing Future Library project in Oslo, Norway.

Maya West (Translator)
Born and raised in Korea, translator Maya West has an MFA in prose from the University of Michigan and operates an independent project space in Seoul called SALT.

e. yaewon (Translator)
e. yaewon translates from and into Korean. Most recently, she translated Hwang Jungeun's dd's Umbrella and Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts and co-translated Han Kang's Greek Lessons and Samuel Beckett's Selected Shorter Plays.

Paige Aniyah Morris (Translator)
Paige Aniyah Morris translates from Korean and divides her time between South Korea and the United States. Her recent translations include Heuijung Hur's Failed Summer Vacation and her co-translation with e. yaewon of Han Kang's We Do Not Part.