Han Kang's WE DO NOT PART opens with a description of a dream, one in which thousands of black tree trunks jut from the earth, giving "the impression of a thousand men, women, and haggard children huddling in the snow. Was this a graveyard?.... Are these gravestones?" the dreamer wonders. Before that question can be answered, the dreamer realizes that the snow-filled scene takes place on the shore of the ocean --- and the tide is rapidly coming in. With that, the sleeper wakes up.

It turns out that this dream is a recurring one for the narrator, a novelist named Kyungha. She started having the nightmare as she began researching material for a novel about a Korean political uprising and the resulting massacre. The book has since been published, but the nightmare persists, often bleeding over into her daily life: "Sometimes, with some dreams, you awake and sense that the dream is ongoing elsewhere."

"WE DO NOT PART is never easy to read, as Kang’s prose is unflinching in its depiction of violence. But it is luminous and can even be hopeful, its dreamlike landscapes opening pathways for alternate histories and potential futures."

This sense seems to persist when, years after they had fallen out of touch, Kyungha receives an urgent message from a former colleague and friend. Inseon is a filmmaker who returned years earlier to Jeju, the remote island where she grew up, in order to help care for her elderly mother. She now summons her one-time friend to a hospital in Seoul.

There, to Kyungha's horror, she discovers that Inseon has severed several of her fingers in a woodworking accident. Although Kyungha abandoned the idea long ago, Inseon has continued pursuing what was at one time a joint vision --- an art installation of giant logs covered in snow, inspired by Inseon's recurring dream. Kyungha is even more shocked when she learns the reason she's been contacted. Inseon's mother has died, and her only companion is a bird. Inseon was rushed to the hospital without providing the bird with food or water. So she begs Kyungha to drop everything, fly to Jeju, and try to keep the bird alive.

Kyungha arrives in Jeju in the middle of a blizzard, and she undertakes a perilous journey to get to Inseon's remote home and workshop. There she encounters both sadness and wonder, as she is greeted by a sort of spirit-Inseon, who proceeds to trace for Kyungha her family history. This history is also a glimpse into the tragic past of Jeju Island and its inhabitants --- the site of a massacre that took place at the start of the Korean War and was kept secret for decades thereafter.

There's a reason why some Americans call the Korean War the "Forgotten War." When I was learning history, this conflict was often glossed over in favor of studying World War II and Vietnam. As she's done in prior novels, though, recent Nobel Prize winner Kang compels her readers not to forget. In the process, she demonstrates why sometimes art can be the most powerful way to contend with painful history.

Here, moments of surreal beauty ("I looked up at the blanketed trees. Their crowns were invisible. When the candle passed over the branches within view, the snow glittered like salt flakes") --- are juxtaposed against accounts of nearly unimaginable violence, terror and loss. Kyungha's dream gains new and terrible significance --- or rather, the significance of its symbolism to Inseon, given the history of her family and her island, becomes all too clear. Along the way, Kyungha gains profound respect for Inseon's mother, whom Kyungha only knew as a frail old woman, as well as a new understanding of her estranged friend.

WE DO NOT PART is never easy to read, as Kang’s prose is unflinching in its depiction of violence. But it is luminous and can even be hopeful, its dreamlike landscapes opening pathways for alternate histories and potential futures.