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/
The observation that Han Kang’s work mirrors very
distinctive perceptions of women’s innermost world was
expressed by
