Han Kang - Nobel Prize in Literature, 2024
Best known for “The Vegetarian,” is the first writer from her country to receive the prestigious award.
receiving the honor for “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”, said Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy
The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English.
Han, 53 (2024), was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful.
When Han was 9, her family moved to Seoul just months before the Gwangju uprising, when government troops fired on crowds of pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds.
The event shaped her views on humanity’s capacity for violence, Han said in the 2016 interview, and its specter has haunted her writing.
In her 2014 novel “Human Acts,” a writer observes a police raid on a group of activists.
Her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023.
In “Greek Lessons,” a woman loses her ability to speak and tries to restore it by learning ancient Greek
Past recipients have included Toni Morrison, Harold Pinter and, in 2016, Bob Dylan.
Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million.
Although relatively young for Nobel laureate, Han is far older than Rudyard Kipling was when he accepted the 1907 award, at age 41.
criticism for the academy over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America.
Since 2020, the academy has awarded the prize to one person of color — Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian writer whose novels dissect the legacy of colonialism — as well as two women: Louise Glück, the American poet, and Annie Ernaux, the French writer of autobiographical works.
Last year’s recipient was Jon Fosse, a Norwegian author and playwright whose novels, told in lengthy sentences, often contain religious undertones.
Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901.
