South Korean author Han Kang wins the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature

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South Korean author Han Kang wins the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature | Books

South Korean author Han Kang wins the 2024 Nobel prize in literature

Han, whose works include The Vegetarian, was praised for her ‘intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life’

Han Kang pictured in 2015. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Ella Creamer

Thu 10 Oct 2024 12.05 BST

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The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to 53-year-old South Korean novelist Han Kang for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. Her works include The Vegetarian, The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons.

“I was able to talk to Han Kang on the phone,” said Swedish Academy permanent secretary Mats Malm after announcing the winner. “She was having an ordinary day it seemed – had just finished supper with her son. She wasn’t really prepared for this, but we have begun to discuss preparations for December” – when Han will be presented with the Nobel prize.

“I’m so surprised and absolutely I’m honoured,” Han said, in a phone interview shared by the Swedish Academy. “I grew up with Korean literature, which I feel very close to. So I hope this news is nice for Korean literature readers, and my friends and writers.”

According to Korean news reports, some online bookstores were brought down by an influx of traffic following the announcement, and multiple government hearings were paused as officials cheered the news. In a statement, Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol congratulated Han: “You converted the painful wounds of our modern history into great literature,” he said. “I send my respects to you for elevating the value of Korean literature.”

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Han’s novels, novellas, essays and short story collections have variously explored themes of patriarchy, violence, grief and humanity. Her 2007 novel The Vegetarian, which was translated into English in 2015 by Deborah Smith, won the International Booker prize in 2016.

Han is the first South Korean author and 18th woman to win the prize. Her “empathy for vulnerable, often female, lives is palpable, and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose,” said Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee. “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”

“I have long known that Han Kang is one of the most profound and skilled writers working on the contemporary world stage,” said novelist Deborah Levy. “Well done, dearest Han Kang, I’m so pleased that you are our 2024 Nobel.”

Novelist Max Porter, who edited Smith’s translation of The Vegetarian, said Han is “a vital voice and a writer of extraordinary humanity. Her work is a gift to us all. I am beyond thrilled she has been recognised by the Nobel committee. New readers will discover, and be changed by, her miraculous work.”

“This is such a well-deserved accomplishment” of Han’s, said writer and translator Bora Chung, whose collection of short stories Cursed Bunny, translated from Korean by Anton Hur, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker prize. “We are immensely proud of her!”

Han was born in Gwangju, a city in the south-west of South Korea, in 1970. When she was 10, her family moved to the Suyu-dong neighbourhood of Seoul. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University in the capital.

In 1993, Han made her literary debut with a series of five poems published in the Korean magazine Literature and Society. The following year she won the Seoul Shinmun spring literary contest with a story, Red Anchor.

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Her first short story collection, Love of Yeosu, was published in 1995. In 1998 she participated in the University of Iowa International Writing Program for three months, supported by Arts Council Korea.

The Vegetarian was her first novel to be translated into English. Though the translation was criticised, it won the International Booker prize and helped earn Han worldwide readership.

Writer Boyd Tonkin, who chaired the 2016 International Booker judging panel, wrote in an X post that eight years ago, “media scoffers ridiculed our choice of an ‘obscure’ Korean. But readers loved it”. Now, “many more will discover this unique vision and voice”, he added.

Kan’s 2014 novel, Human Acts, is about the May 1980 Gwangju massacre, when an uprising was brutally suppressed by the military. The novel “remembers and retells the Gwangju massacre by narrating how sufferings from this historical event came to be written into the everyday life and the bodies of the victims, witnesses and survivors, exploring this from the perspective of six people directly and indirectly impacted by this massacre,” said Hannah Hyun Kyong Chang, lecturer in Korean studies at the University of Sheffield.

Han’s latest novel, We Do Not Part, will be published in English in 2025, translated by E Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. The story follows a writer discovering the impact of the 1948-49 Jeju uprising on the family of her friend. The French translation of the novel won the prix Médicis Étranger in 2023.

“What a wonderful moment this is for Han Kang and for all who love her work,” said Simon Prosser, publishing director at Hamish Hamilton, Han’s UK publisher. “In writing of exceptional beauty and clarity she faces unflinchingly the painful question of what it means to be human – to be of a species which is simultaneously capable of acts of cruelty and acts of love. She sees and thinks and feels like no other writer.”

Han is “one of the greatest living writers”, according to novelist Eimear McBride. “She is a voice for women, for truth and, above all, for the power of what literature can be. This is a very richly deserved win.”

 South Korean writer Han Kang gets 2024 Nobel Prize

Korean author Han Kang | Image: han-kang.net News South Korean writer Han Kang gets 2024 Nobel Prize

https://thefederal.com/category/news/south-korean-writer-han-kang-gets-2024-nobel-prize-in-literature-149656

South Korean writer Han Kang gets 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature

Han Kang wins Nobel Prize in literature for ‘intense poetic prose’ confronting human fragility

By Christian Edwards, CNN

Updated 7:56 AM EDT, Thu October 10, 2024

South Korean writer Han Kang at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August 2016. 

Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images

CNN — 

The 2024 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Han Kang, a South Korean author, for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Han, 53, began her career with a group of poems in a South Korean magazine, before making her prose debut in 1995 with a short story collection.

She later began writing longer prose works, most notably “The Vegetarian,” one of her first books to be translated into English. The novel, which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, charts a young woman’s attempt to live a more “plant-like” existence after suffering macabre nightmares about human cruelty.

Han is the first South Korean author to win the literature prize, and just the 18th woman out of the 117 prizes awarded since 1901. The prize, announced in Sweden on Thursday, carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million).

Much of Han’s work poses the question, voiced by a character in her 2019 novel “Europa,” whose protagonist is wracked by nightmares: “If you were able to live as you desire, what would you do with your life?”

Although many of Han’s protagonists are women, her prose works are often narrated from the perspective of men.

“Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way,” her novel “The Vegetarian” begins. “However, if there wasn’t any special attraction, nor did any particular drawbacks present themselves, and therefore there was no reason for the two of us not to get married.”

Originally written and published in Korean, “The Vegetarian” was translated by Deborah Smith, who was 28 at the time. Smith, by her own admission, was “monolingual until the age of 21,” and only chose to pursue Korean due to a lack of English-Korean translators.

The Swedish Academy lauded Han’s work for her “unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead.” Through her “poetic and experimental style,” the Academy said, Han “has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”

Anna-Karin Palm, a member of the Nobel Committee for literature, said readers unfamiliar with Han’s work should begin with “Human Acts,” a 2014 novel reflecting on the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, when more than 100 civilians were killed during pro-democracy demonstrations led by students in the South Korean city.

“Human Acts” shows how “the living and the dead are always intertwined and how these kinds of traumas stay in a population for generations,” Palm said at Thursday’s announcement ceremony.

But Han’s “intense, lyrical” writing almost acts as consolation in the face of this historical violence, Palm added. “Her very tender, precise prose in itself almost becomes a counterforce to the brutal noisiness of power,” she said.

Before the announcement, Ellen Mattson, another member of the committee, detailed how the judging panel sets about selecting each year’s literature laureate.

“We start with a very long list of around 220 names,” Mattson said. “Then we have to navigate through this enormous mass of names – and there we need the help of experts from different parts of the world.”

Eventually, the committee reaches a collection of “about 20 names,” which is then narrowed down to a shortlist of five authors. “That’s where the real work starts,” Mattson said.

Each committee member then has to “read everything by these five writers” as they begin to hone in on a single winner.

Announcing the award, Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Han was “having an ordinary day” and had “just finished supper with her son” when he phoned to congratulate her.

“She wasn’t really prepared for this, but we have begun to discuss preparations for December,” he said. The Nobel Prize award ceremony takes place in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.

Han Kang Wins 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, First South Korean Laureate | DRM News | AE1G

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Oct 11, 2024 #HanKang #NobelPrize2024 #NobelLiterature

South Korean author Han Kang has won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for her poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and highlights the fragility of human life. Han is the first South Korean to receive the award, which is worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million). She began her career in 1993 with poetry, and her international breakthrough came with the novel The Vegetarian.

Han Kang, the first South Korean to win the literature prize, began her career in 1993 with the publication of a number of poems in the magazine Literature and Society, while her prose debut came in 1995 with the short story collection "Love of Yeosu."

Born in 1970, she comes from a literary background, her father being a well-regarded novelist.

Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction for her novel "The Vegetarian" in 2016, the first of her novels to be translated into English and regarded as her major international breakthrough.

In "The Vegetarian," after struggling with gruesome recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye, a dutiful wife, rebels against societal norms, forsaking meat and stirring concern among her family that she is mentally ill.

Two of her books have been made into films; "The Vegetarian" in 2009, directed by Lim Woo-Seong, and 2011's "Scars," by the same director.

Her 2002 novel "Your Cold Hands," which bears obvious traces of Han Kang's interest in art, reproduces a manuscript left behind by a missing sculptor who is obsessed with making plaster casts of female bodies.

She is the second South Korean to win a Nobel prize ever, after 2000 peace prize winner and former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

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Han Kang Wins 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, First South Korean Laureate | DRM News | AE1G

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