South Korean writer Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday. The Nobel committee called her work “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” the prize’s website said.
Nobel Committee Chairman Anders Olsson praised Han’s “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters.
Nobel Week takes place in Stockholm and Oslo in October 7-14. Prizes have already been awarded in Physiology and Medicine, Physics and Chemistry.
Han Kang is the first South Korean author and the 18th woman to be honoured with the award. The size of this year’s cash prize is 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million).
Kang was born in 1970 in Gwangju before moving to Seoul with her family. In the 1990s, the journal Literature and Society began publishing her poetry, and in 1995 she published her first collection of short stories.
The Nobel Committee called her 2007 novel The Vegetarian, about a woman who refuses to eat meat, a breakthrough in Han Kang’s career. The book consists of three parts, The Vegetarian, Mongolian Mark and Flaming Trees. In 2016, the writer was awarded the Booker Prize for it.
In 2018, Han Kang became a participant in an interesting endeavour called Future Library. The initiator of the project, Scottish artist Katie Paterson, selected Han Kan’s novel To a Favourite Son for an anthology of 100 texts. The collection will not be published until 90 years from now, in 2114. Until then, the manuscripts will remain in an unpublished and unread form in a library in Oslo, Norway.
In 2023, Norwegian novelist, poet and playwright Jung Fosse won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Nobel Prize in Literature has been given since 1901. According to Alfred Nobel’s will, it should be awarded to the author “who has produced the most significant work of idealistic literature.”
