Nobel Prize winner Han Kang’s first work of nonfiction published in English—an inspiring, intimate collection of essays, diary entries, poems, and photos on the subject of writing and the role of love and memory in defying injustice through art

What is love?

It is the gold thread connecting between our hearts.

When Han Kang was eight years old, she wrote a poem about the nature of love and the light it casts upon our lives. In 2023, while packing for a move, she rediscovered the poem in an old shoe box. The following year, after Han was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, she returned to her childhood poem as she prepared to deliver her Nobel Lecture in Stockholm.

Han, one of the most searing voices of twenty-first-century literature, is a master at laying bare the essence of humanity. When awarding her the Nobel, the Swedish Academy cited “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” Light and Thread exemplifies how she makes sense of human cruelty by remembering the past through language and with love. Both an ethical treatise and a personal testimony, Light and Thread provides rich insight into Han’s novels, as well as an illuminating path for us all to follow while confronting loss and the injuries of history.