Kyungha, a writer haunted by recurring, uncanny dreams, travels through a severe snowstorm to the house of her friend and artistic collaborator Inseon, who is in hospital recovering from an accident. Inseon has asked Kyungha to look after her pair of pet birds, who will die if left without food or water. Equipped with just a dead cell phone and soggy trainers, Kyungha makes a desperate journey into the freezing darkness. 

The bus rides and subsequent hike to Inseon’s studio deep in the woods form a vivid, nailbiting set-piece, during which Kang carefully dissects the shared histories and the bonds of artistic creation that unite the two women. Then, on arriving at the isolated studio, the sensitive and unstable Kyungha must face something darker and more terrible than the storm. Spectres of Korea’s past, and of her own disquieting visions, are closing in.

This novel grapples with the legacy of brutal massacres the US-backed Korean government carried out on the island of Jeju during the 1940s. As with Kang’s previous work, We Do Not Part gives voice to victims of genocide, unearths suppressed histories and compassionately documents lives shaped by intergenerational trauma. Written in prose of extraordinary visual and sensory precision, this is a ghost story of uncommon power and literary depth.