Questões: Universidade Estadual do Ceará (UECE) — com gabarito

GARCIA, Maria Fernanda. Dragão do Mar fez Ceará abolir a

escravidão 4 anos antes da Lei Áurea. Observatório do

Terceiro Setor. 2018. Disponível em:

https://observatorio3setor.org.br/carrossel/dragao-domar-fez-ceara-abolir-a-escravidao-4-anos-antes-da-leiaurea/ Acesso em: 09 de maio de 2019.

TEXT

    MORE and more retired people are heading back to the nearest classroom — as students and, in some cases, teachers — and they are finding out that school can be lovelier the second time around. Some may be thinking of second careers, but most just want to keep their minds stimulated, learn something new or catch up with a subject they were always curious about but never had time for.

    For many, at least part of the motivation is based on widespread reports that exercising the brain may preserve it, forestalling mental decline and maybe even Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia. Is there any truth to it? And if there is, what type of learning is best suited to the older brain?

    Many studies do find that being mentally active is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease. But the standard caveat applies: association does not prove cause and effect, and there is always the chance that the mentally active people who never got Alzheimer’s simply had healthier brains to begin with. Even, so, researchers say, there is no harm in telling people to try to stay engaged.

    “When you and I are having this conversation, you’re taking notes, thinking, remembering pieces of it, trying to relate it to other things,” said Arthur Toga, a professor of neurology and director of the laboratory of neuroimaging at the University of California, Los Angeles. “You’re changing the circuitry in your brain. That is because you have changed something in your brain to retain that memory.”

    Dr. Toga elaborated: “The conversation requires nerve cells in the brain to fire, and when they fire they are using energy. More oxygen and sugar must be delivered, by increased blood flow to those regions.

    “Why would that be good? If you are vasodilating, delivering more blood to certain regions of the brain, that is important. It increases the longevity and the health of those circuits. In adults, if I ask you to perform tasks you’ve never done before, the amount of brain it takes for you to try and do it is far greater than the amount of brain it takes for you to do something you’re already good at. So yes, exercising the brain is good.” Playing video games probably qualifies as a type of brain exercise, he said, though older people might not sharpen their skills as fast as younger ones do.

    Dr. Toga warned that while using the brain might help avert some of the mental slowing that normally comes with aging, it had its limits. “I do not believe that it forestalls degenerative disease, however,” he said. “That’s a different process.”

    But research continues. Dr. William Jagust, a professor of public health and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, said there were two main theories that tried to explain why exercising the brain might make it more resistant to disease. One is the “cognitive reserve” theory, which says that if the brain is in the best possible shape with extensive neuronal connections from being used a lot, it may be able to withstand the onset of Alzheimer’s disease for a while and symptoms may take longer to develop.

    A hallmark of Alzheimer’s is deposits in the brain of an abnormal form of a protein called amyloid. “A paper we published showed that people who were more cognitively active over their whole life span had less amyloid,” Dr. Jagust said.

    “My interpretation is that people who are more cognitively active have more efficient brains,” Dr. Jagust said. “What seems to happen in aging is that older people seem to have less efficient brains.” A scan of brain activity on a 20- year-old being asked to remember something will show less activity needed than in an 80-year-old asked to perform the same task.

    “Older people seem to activate or bring on line brain areas that young people don’t use,” Dr. Jagust said. “They have to work their brains harder. So people who stay cognitively active may use their brains more efficiently.” That way, they may generate fewer amyloid deposits. But he emphasized that being mentally active throughout life — not just in old age — was what mattered.

    Nonetheless, Dr. Jagust acknowledged, “this is all theoretical.”

    It is a good idea to try something new.

    “A variety of things is important,” Dr. Toga said. “We try to encourage people to do certain things because it couldn’t hurt and may be good.Retaining lots of social interaction is really important. It involves so much of the brain. You have to interpret facial expressions and understand new concepts.

    [...]

    One of the largest programs for retirees is at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay (it is not associated with Osher). Called Learning in Retirement, it is sponsored by the university, with more than 1,000 members and more than 240 courses a year. Michael W. Murphy, who spent more than 30 years as an English professor, said this program had brought him some of the greatest joy he had experienced in the classroom. Since 2001, when he stepped down from his post as acting dean at the university, he has been teaching poetry and other subjects to Learning in Retirement members. It is an unpaid position. “I’ve always enjoyed teaching, and the idea of teaching without having to read papers, correct tests and worst of all, give out grades, was really appealing,” Dr. Murphy said.

    To his delight, the students actually want to be there. They take the time to tell him how much they appreciate him and sometimes even break into applause after his lectures. The students include doctors, lawyers, professors and highschool dropouts. “The biggest problem I had teaching 18-year-olds was a kind of general apathy,” Dr. Murphy said. “They were looking forward to a career in high finance and I was trying to teach them to appreciate Tennyson. The fact that these people show up, and toddle in or waddle in, some with their walkers or wheelchairs, it’s heartwarming.”

www.nytimes.com/, March 7, 2012

T E X T

The word ‘viral’ has lost its meaning

      The nature of virality has shifted radically over the past decade as the internet has fractured into uncounted disparate algorithms, platforms, and niche communities. The volume of content being churned out every day has skyrocketed, the life cycle of each piece of media has grown shorter and social media platforms continue to inflate public metrics, devaluing previously impressive online stats.

        All of these factors have rendered the term “viral” nearly meaningless, say experts, and have led to a condition we’ll call “viralflation.” The term speaks to the diminished meaning of virality. If everything is labeled viral, then is nothing viral?

       “Back in the day, 1 million views was the thing,” said Marcus Stringer, a partner manager at Social Blade, a social media analytics platform. “That meant you’d gone viral, and you’d get picked up by news agencies around the world. Now, tens of millions of views is the norm for top YouTube channels. Soon, 20 million views will eventually become the norm.”

      “Because the concept of virality has been so watered down, truly viral pieces of content must reach hundreds of millions of people at a scale that’s increasingly unattainable for anyone but MrBeast,” said Lara Cohen, vice president of partners and business development at Linktree, a platform that allows creators to aggregate links to their social media profiles on one page. MrBeast is the internet name of Jimmy Donaldson, YouTube’s most watched creator.

        A decade and a half ago, there was a clear delineation between viral content and the vast majority of media that users would encounter every day. The internet was smaller, and most sharing was manual (people emailing and messaging links to each other) or via early internet aggregators such as sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

         Viral content emerged slowly, so the life span of a viral video was long. Some content remained viral for up to a year, worming its way through the internet as it gained traction. When social media platforms began to switch to algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in the mid 2010s, the viral content cycle accelerated, experts said. Brands began recognizing the power of virality and started to attempt to manufacture it. Content creators joined engagement groups where they’d reshare each other’s content in attempts to force virality.

       Platforms themselves also began to realize the power of virality and sought to generate it, or at least generate the appearance of it. This was the beginning of the era of viralflation. Facebook helped lower the industry-wide threshold for what counted as a video view, and began inflating view counts on various Facebook videos in an effort to make them appear more viral than they were.

      Then TikTok broke into the mainstream in 2020, lowering the bar even further for what counted as a “view.” While a view on Facebook counts after three seconds of watch time, a view on TikTok is simply an impression, meaning the video was served to a user for at least a fraction of a second on screen. According to the company, TikTok also counts each loop of the video as a view, allowing videos to rake in massive view counts.

       “The speed at which we cycle through trends and sort of moments of virality on the internet is faster now largely because of TikTok,” Cohen said. This has created an arms race among tech platforms to see which could inflate metrics the most. There’s been an incentive to have these numbers look bigger because they look better to advertisers, so there’s a financial incentive to cause this viral inflation.

       A new class of content creators also has raised the bar for what’s considered viral. “When MrBeast started to explode, things really started to change in the landscape,” Stringer said. “People didn’t consider [earlier metrics of virality] viral anymore, because he’s getting multi millions of views per video.”

     Coco Mocoe, a trend forecaster in Los Angeles, said that along with these shifts, users are also consuming a higher total amount of content online per day, especially members of Generation Z, those born between 1998 and 2012. They are more likely to consume all forms of media through the internet and social platforms, rather than via newspapers or TV. And, much of that content is short form and less than 60 seconds long. “The main reason there are bigger numbers now is because people are consuming so much more content in a given sitting,” she added.

     This has made virality more ephemeral. “There’s not that same… permanence,” Mocoe said. “If you’re watching 50 videos with 1 million views, you’re less likely to remember one as opposed to a decade ago, when you might only watch five videos a day, and just one would have 1 million views.” For the average consumer, viralflation has made it increasingly difficult to tell what is and isn’t actually viral. Because we no longer have any shared sense of virality, it makes it easier for people who don’t understand the mechanics of the internet to fall for fake viral trends.

Adapted from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ 2024/03/09/

T E X T

The word ‘viral’ has lost its meaning

      The nature of virality has shifted radically over the past decade as the internet has fractured into uncounted disparate algorithms, platforms, and niche communities. The volume of content being churned out every day has skyrocketed, the life cycle of each piece of media has grown shorter and social media platforms continue to inflate public metrics, devaluing previously impressive online stats.

        All of these factors have rendered the term “viral” nearly meaningless, say experts, and have led to a condition we’ll call “viralflation.” The term speaks to the diminished meaning of virality. If everything is labeled viral, then is nothing viral?

       “Back in the day, 1 million views was the thing,” said Marcus Stringer, a partner manager at Social Blade, a social media analytics platform. “That meant you’d gone viral, and you’d get picked up by news agencies around the world. Now, tens of millions of views is the norm for top YouTube channels. Soon, 20 million views will eventually become the norm.”

      “Because the concept of virality has been so watered down, truly viral pieces of content must reach hundreds of millions of people at a scale that’s increasingly unattainable for anyone but MrBeast,” said Lara Cohen, vice president of partners and business development at Linktree, a platform that allows creators to aggregate links to their social media profiles on one page. MrBeast is the internet name of Jimmy Donaldson, YouTube’s most watched creator.

        A decade and a half ago, there was a clear delineation between viral content and the vast majority of media that users would encounter every day. The internet was smaller, and most sharing was manual (people emailing and messaging links to each other) or via early internet aggregators such as sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

         Viral content emerged slowly, so the life span of a viral video was long. Some content remained viral for up to a year, worming its way through the internet as it gained traction. When social media platforms began to switch to algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in the mid 2010s, the viral content cycle accelerated, experts said. Brands began recognizing the power of virality and started to attempt to manufacture it. Content creators joined engagement groups where they’d reshare each other’s content in attempts to force virality.

       Platforms themselves also began to realize the power of virality and sought to generate it, or at least generate the appearance of it. This was the beginning of the era of viralflation. Facebook helped lower the industry-wide threshold for what counted as a video view, and began inflating view counts on various Facebook videos in an effort to make them appear more viral than they were.

      Then TikTok broke into the mainstream in 2020, lowering the bar even further for what counted as a “view.” While a view on Facebook counts after three seconds of watch time, a view on TikTok is simply an impression, meaning the video was served to a user for at least a fraction of a second on screen. According to the company, TikTok also counts each loop of the video as a view, allowing videos to rake in massive view counts.

       “The speed at which we cycle through trends and sort of moments of virality on the internet is faster now largely because of TikTok,” Cohen said. This has created an arms race among tech platforms to see which could inflate metrics the most. There’s been an incentive to have these numbers look bigger because they look better to advertisers, so there’s a financial incentive to cause this viral inflation.

       A new class of content creators also has raised the bar for what’s considered viral. “When MrBeast started to explode, things really started to change in the landscape,” Stringer said. “People didn’t consider [earlier metrics of virality] viral anymore, because he’s getting multi millions of views per video.”

     Coco Mocoe, a trend forecaster in Los Angeles, said that along with these shifts, users are also consuming a higher total amount of content online per day, especially members of Generation Z, those born between 1998 and 2012. They are more likely to consume all forms of media through the internet and social platforms, rather than via newspapers or TV. And, much of that content is short form and less than 60 seconds long. “The main reason there are bigger numbers now is because people are consuming so much more content in a given sitting,” she added.

     This has made virality more ephemeral. “There’s not that same… permanence,” Mocoe said. “If you’re watching 50 videos with 1 million views, you’re less likely to remember one as opposed to a decade ago, when you might only watch five videos a day, and just one would have 1 million views.” For the average consumer, viralflation has made it increasingly difficult to tell what is and isn’t actually viral. Because we no longer have any shared sense of virality, it makes it easier for people who don’t understand the mechanics of the internet to fall for fake viral trends.

Adapted from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ 2024/03/09/

T E X T

The word ‘viral’ has lost its meaning

      The nature of virality has shifted radically over the past decade as the internet has fractured into uncounted disparate algorithms, platforms, and niche communities. The volume of content being churned out every day has skyrocketed, the life cycle of each piece of media has grown shorter and social media platforms continue to inflate public metrics, devaluing previously impressive online stats.

        All of these factors have rendered the term “viral” nearly meaningless, say experts, and have led to a condition we’ll call “viralflation.” The term speaks to the diminished meaning of virality. If everything is labeled viral, then is nothing viral?

       “Back in the day, 1 million views was the thing,” said Marcus Stringer, a partner manager at Social Blade, a social media analytics platform. “That meant you’d gone viral, and you’d get picked up by news agencies around the world. Now, tens of millions of views is the norm for top YouTube channels. Soon, 20 million views will eventually become the norm.”

      “Because the concept of virality has been so watered down, truly viral pieces of content must reach hundreds of millions of people at a scale that’s increasingly unattainable for anyone but MrBeast,” said Lara Cohen, vice president of partners and business development at Linktree, a platform that allows creators to aggregate links to their social media profiles on one page. MrBeast is the internet name of Jimmy Donaldson, YouTube’s most watched creator.

        A decade and a half ago, there was a clear delineation between viral content and the vast majority of media that users would encounter every day. The internet was smaller, and most sharing was manual (people emailing and messaging links to each other) or via early internet aggregators such as sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

         Viral content emerged slowly, so the life span of a viral video was long. Some content remained viral for up to a year, worming its way through the internet as it gained traction. When social media platforms began to switch to algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in the mid 2010s, the viral content cycle accelerated, experts said. Brands began recognizing the power of virality and started to attempt to manufacture it. Content creators joined engagement groups where they’d reshare each other’s content in attempts to force virality.

       Platforms themselves also began to realize the power of virality and sought to generate it, or at least generate the appearance of it. This was the beginning of the era of viralflation. Facebook helped lower the industry-wide threshold for what counted as a video view, and began inflating view counts on various Facebook videos in an effort to make them appear more viral than they were.

      Then TikTok broke into the mainstream in 2020, lowering the bar even further for what counted as a “view.” While a view on Facebook counts after three seconds of watch time, a view on TikTok is simply an impression, meaning the video was served to a user for at least a fraction of a second on screen. According to the company, TikTok also counts each loop of the video as a view, allowing videos to rake in massive view counts.

       “The speed at which we cycle through trends and sort of moments of virality on the internet is faster now largely because of TikTok,” Cohen said. This has created an arms race among tech platforms to see which could inflate metrics the most. There’s been an incentive to have these numbers look bigger because they look better to advertisers, so there’s a financial incentive to cause this viral inflation.

       A new class of content creators also has raised the bar for what’s considered viral. “When MrBeast started to explode, things really started to change in the landscape,” Stringer said. “People didn’t consider [earlier metrics of virality] viral anymore, because he’s getting multi millions of views per video.”

     Coco Mocoe, a trend forecaster in Los Angeles, said that along with these shifts, users are also consuming a higher total amount of content online per day, especially members of Generation Z, those born between 1998 and 2012. They are more likely to consume all forms of media through the internet and social platforms, rather than via newspapers or TV. And, much of that content is short form and less than 60 seconds long. “The main reason there are bigger numbers now is because people are consuming so much more content in a given sitting,” she added.

     This has made virality more ephemeral. “There’s not that same… permanence,” Mocoe said. “If you’re watching 50 videos with 1 million views, you’re less likely to remember one as opposed to a decade ago, when you might only watch five videos a day, and just one would have 1 million views.” For the average consumer, viralflation has made it increasingly difficult to tell what is and isn’t actually viral. Because we no longer have any shared sense of virality, it makes it easier for people who don’t understand the mechanics of the internet to fall for fake viral trends.

Adapted from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ 2024/03/09/

T E X T

The word ‘viral’ has lost its meaning

      The nature of virality has shifted radically over the past decade as the internet has fractured into uncounted disparate algorithms, platforms, and niche communities. The volume of content being churned out every day has skyrocketed, the life cycle of each piece of media has grown shorter and social media platforms continue to inflate public metrics, devaluing previously impressive online stats.

        All of these factors have rendered the term “viral” nearly meaningless, say experts, and have led to a condition we’ll call “viralflation.” The term speaks to the diminished meaning of virality. If everything is labeled viral, then is nothing viral?

       “Back in the day, 1 million views was the thing,” said Marcus Stringer, a partner manager at Social Blade, a social media analytics platform. “That meant you’d gone viral, and you’d get picked up by news agencies around the world. Now, tens of millions of views is the norm for top YouTube channels. Soon, 20 million views will eventually become the norm.”

      “Because the concept of virality has been so watered down, truly viral pieces of content must reach hundreds of millions of people at a scale that’s increasingly unattainable for anyone but MrBeast,” said Lara Cohen, vice president of partners and business development at Linktree, a platform that allows creators to aggregate links to their social media profiles on one page. MrBeast is the internet name of Jimmy Donaldson, YouTube’s most watched creator.

        A decade and a half ago, there was a clear delineation between viral content and the vast majority of media that users would encounter every day. The internet was smaller, and most sharing was manual (people emailing and messaging links to each other) or via early internet aggregators such as sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

         Viral content emerged slowly, so the life span of a viral video was long. Some content remained viral for up to a year, worming its way through the internet as it gained traction. When social media platforms began to switch to algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in the mid 2010s, the viral content cycle accelerated, experts said. Brands began recognizing the power of virality and started to attempt to manufacture it. Content creators joined engagement groups where they’d reshare each other’s content in attempts to force virality.

       Platforms themselves also began to realize the power of virality and sought to generate it, or at least generate the appearance of it. This was the beginning of the era of viralflation. Facebook helped lower the industry-wide threshold for what counted as a video view, and began inflating view counts on various Facebook videos in an effort to make them appear more viral than they were.

      Then TikTok broke into the mainstream in 2020, lowering the bar even further for what counted as a “view.” While a view on Facebook counts after three seconds of watch time, a view on TikTok is simply an impression, meaning the video was served to a user for at least a fraction of a second on screen. According to the company, TikTok also counts each loop of the video as a view, allowing videos to rake in massive view counts.

       “The speed at which we cycle through trends and sort of moments of virality on the internet is faster now largely because of TikTok,” Cohen said. This has created an arms race among tech platforms to see which could inflate metrics the most. There’s been an incentive to have these numbers look bigger because they look better to advertisers, so there’s a financial incentive to cause this viral inflation.

       A new class of content creators also has raised the bar for what’s considered viral. “When MrBeast started to explode, things really started to change in the landscape,” Stringer said. “People didn’t consider [earlier metrics of virality] viral anymore, because he’s getting multi millions of views per video.”

     Coco Mocoe, a trend forecaster in Los Angeles, said that along with these shifts, users are also consuming a higher total amount of content online per day, especially members of Generation Z, those born between 1998 and 2012. They are more likely to consume all forms of media through the internet and social platforms, rather than via newspapers or TV. And, much of that content is short form and less than 60 seconds long. “The main reason there are bigger numbers now is because people are consuming so much more content in a given sitting,” she added.

     This has made virality more ephemeral. “There’s not that same… permanence,” Mocoe said. “If you’re watching 50 videos with 1 million views, you’re less likely to remember one as opposed to a decade ago, when you might only watch five videos a day, and just one would have 1 million views.” For the average consumer, viralflation has made it increasingly difficult to tell what is and isn’t actually viral. Because we no longer have any shared sense of virality, it makes it easier for people who don’t understand the mechanics of the internet to fall for fake viral trends.

Adapted from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ 2024/03/09/

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T E X T

Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

    Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel, “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature [2024] — the first writer from her country to receive the award.

    Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

    “The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.” 

    Han’s Nobel was a surprise. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media, and greeted with fanfare in South Korea. “This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel, “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.

    “Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.” 

    Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.” 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.

    She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising. “It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”

    Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023. 

    “Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.” 

    Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time. She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages. “Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” said Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”

    Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.

    The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million. In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America. 

    Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901. Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea.

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/

T E X T

Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

    Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel, “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature [2024] — the first writer from her country to receive the award.

    Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

    “The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.” 

    Han’s Nobel was a surprise. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media, and greeted with fanfare in South Korea. “This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel, “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.

    “Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.” 

    Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.” 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.

    She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising. “It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”

    Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023. 

    “Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.” 

    Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time. She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages. “Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” said Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”

    Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.

    The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million. In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America. 

    Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901. Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea.

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/

T E X T

Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

    Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel, “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature [2024] — the first writer from her country to receive the award.

    Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

    “The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.” 

    Han’s Nobel was a surprise. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media, and greeted with fanfare in South Korea. “This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel, “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.

    “Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.” 

    Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.” 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.

    She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising. “It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”

    Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023. 

    “Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.” 

    Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time. She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages. “Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” said Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”

    Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.

    The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million. In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America. 

    Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901. Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea.

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/

T E X T

Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

    Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel, “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature [2024] — the first writer from her country to receive the award.

    Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

    “The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.” 

    Han’s Nobel was a surprise. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media, and greeted with fanfare in South Korea. “This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel, “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.

    “Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.” 

    Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.” 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.

    She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising. “It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”

    Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023. 

    “Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.” 

    Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time. She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages. “Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” said Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”

    Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.

    The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million. In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America. 

    Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901. Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea.

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/

T E X T

Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

    Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel, “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature [2024] — the first writer from her country to receive the award.

    Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

    “The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.” 

    Han’s Nobel was a surprise. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media, and greeted with fanfare in South Korea. “This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel, “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.

    “Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.” 

    Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.” 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.

    She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising. “It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”

    Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023. 

    “Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.” 

    Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time. She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages. “Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” said Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”

    Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.

    The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million. In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America. 

    Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901. Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea.

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/

T E X T

Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

    Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel, “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature [2024] — the first writer from her country to receive the award.

    Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

    “The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.” 

    Han’s Nobel was a surprise. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media, and greeted with fanfare in South Korea. “This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel, “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.

    “Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.” 

    Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.” 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.

    She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising. “It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”

    Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023. 

    “Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.” 

    Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time. She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages. “Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” said Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”

    Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.

    The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million. In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America. 

    Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901. Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea.

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/

T E X T

Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

    Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel, “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature [2024] — the first writer from her country to receive the award.

    Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

    “The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.” 

    Han’s Nobel was a surprise. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media, and greeted with fanfare in South Korea. “This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel, “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.

    “Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.” 

    Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.” 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.

    She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising. “It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”

    Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023. 

    “Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.” 

    Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time. She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages. “Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” said Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”

    Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.

    The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million. In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America. 

    Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901. Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea.

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/