White, not black, is the color of mourning in Han's home country of South Korea, as well as other parts of Asia. This latest from Han, whose The Vegetarian was the 2016 Man Booker International Prize winner, is a meditative exploration of the limitless meanings of white-from blankness, erasure, and death to newness, purity, and possibility. Han further condenses her signature brevity, eschewing narrative prose for lists, verses, even fragments. The sparse story that emerges is a writer's journey to an unnamed city (geographical hints include Nazis, destruction, resistance, and rebirth), where she recalls and reimagines an older sister she never knew, her mother's premature first child, who died within hours of birth. Using white objects as connecting leitmotifs, she shifts between time and place, between documenting city explorations and remembering her childhood into adulthood (because she lived). Never far away is her lost sister, her primary companion, whom she exhorts, "Don't die. Live"-at least on the page-even as she realizes that her sister's survival would have erased her own existence. VERDICT With eloquence and grace, Han breathes life into loss and fills the emptiness with this new work, a Man Booker International short-lister fluidly Anglophoned by Han's three-time collaborator Smith. [See Prepub Alert, 8/13/18.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

MAMA'S LAST HUG: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves, by Frans de Waal. (Norton, $27.95.) De Waal argues that we make a grave mistake when we pretend that only humans think, feel and know, and cites neurochemical studies to conclude that feelings like love, anger and joy are widespread throughout the animal kingdom. THE WHITE BOOK, by Han Kang. Translated by Deborah Smith. (Hogarth, $20.) In this latest novel from the author of "The Vegetarian," a Korean writer wanders the city of Warsaw, haunted by her family's losses - and by her country's inability to mourn its own. THE BORDER, by Don Winslow. (Morrow/HarperCollins, $28.99.) The final volume of Winslow's monumental trilogy about the Mexican drug cartels and the American dealers, fixers and addicts who keep the trade flourishing. Whether good, bad or altogether hopeless, his characters are full of life and hard to forget. THE SOURCE OF SELF-REGARD: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, by Toni Morrison. (Knopf, $28.95.) Spanning four decades of Morrison's illustrious career, this collection includes a stirring eulogy to James Baldwin, a prayer for the victims of 9/11 and insights into "Beloved" and her other novels. DEATH IS HARD WORK, by Khaled Khalifa. Translated by Leri Price. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) Khalifa's fifth novel about siblings reunited by their father's death during Syria's current war, wrestles with themes of societal demise and rejuvenation on a tableau every bit as haunted by violence as the swamps and redclay roads of Faulkner's South. SAY NOTHING: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, by Patrick Radden Keefe. (Doubleday, $28.95.) Part history, part true crime, Keefe's book uses the abduction and murder of a Belfast mother to illuminate the bitter conflict known as the Troubles. THE HEAVENS, by Sandra Newman. (Grove, $26.) This novel, which explores notions of time travel, romance and mental stability, features a heroine who comes to believe she lives simultaneously in Elizabethan England and 21st-century New York, with events in one period affecting life in the other. EMPIRES OF THE WEAK: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order, by J. C. Sharman. (Princeton, $27.95.) Taking in 1,000 years of history, Sharman makes the provocative case that European supremacy is a mere blip in mankind's narrative, which is in fact dominated by Asia. ON THE COME UP, by Angie Thomas. (Balzer + Bray, $18.99; ages 12 and up.) Set in the same neighborhood as "The Hate U Give," Thomas's riveting follow-up introduces an aspiring rapper. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

*Starred Review* Shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, the latest from South Korean author Kang (Human Acts, 2017) is a grieving woman's rumination on things that are white, in titled fragments. The unnamed narrator moves to a different country for the winter and mourns the girl her mother gave birth to before her, an infant that died only a few hours after birth. In White City, she passes through a town that had been obliterated by Nazis for attempting to fight back. In Ashes, she meditates on the mysterious calm of death and the struggle of life, the highs and lows only the living experience. In Salt, she realizes that in life, one has the power to heal, preserve, and endure. And in Your Eyes, the narrator contemplates how her sister's death allowed her to live if the infant had survived, she would have never been born. Through these beautifully crafted snapshots, Kang uses language to attempt to transcend the different stages of grief and pain. She explores the dichotomies of black and white, life and death, and the pristine and tragic symbolism that runs between them. Kang's masterful voice is captivating and nothing short of brilliant.--Emily Park Copyright 2018 Booklist

Far from a traditional novel in its presentation, the engrossing latest from Man Booker International winner Han (The Vegetarian) fills spare pages with sometimes poetic meditations on the possibilities of a life unlived. After traveling to Warsaw from South Korea and renting an apartment, Han's unnamed narrator remembers the story of her parents' first child, a girl who died shortly after birth. The narrator investigates her own grief regarding this child to conjure a possible alternate timeline wherein the baby lived. The narrator looks through the eyes of this new person, wandering the foreign city, observing the snowy season developing around her, and using objects like "Sleet," "Salt," and "Sugar cubes" as titles to anchor each section. The narrator crafts an entire life for this lost sister before turning her considerations inward, asking if she would have been conceived if the child had survived. Han breaks her narrative into three parts, "I," "She," and "All Whiteness," and throughout writes with attention to the whiteness of the page. The second section, in particular, is wintery in presentation, with small blocks of black text floating atop swaths of blankness. Though thin on conventional narrative, the novel resonates as a prayer for the departed, and only gains power upon rereading. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.