The South Korean Han Kang wins the Nobel Prize for literature – Europe

Han, 53, was honored “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life,” the Swedish Academy said.

A short story writer and novelist, Han is best known for her book The Vegetarianwhich was his international breakthrough and won the Man Booker Prize in 2016.

Written in three parts, the book details a woman’s decision to stop eating meat and the devastating consequences it has on her personal life.

“This is a very rich and complex work that spans many genres,” Academy member Anna-Karin Palm told reporters.

“Han Kang writes this very intense lyrical prose that is both tender and brutal and sometimes a little surreal,” he said.

Han’s 2014 novel human acts it was inspired by a massacre carried out by the South Korean army in 1980 and is about the death of a child in the middle of the democratic uprising.

Two years later, he published The White Bookdedicated to her older sister who died hours after she was born, with the Academy highlighting her “poetic style”.

The Academy described Han’s 2010 book The wind blows, come on as a “complex novel about friendship and art, in which pain and the yearning for transformation are strongly present”.

During Park Geun-hye’s presidency from 2013 to 2017, Han was among more than 9,000 artists blacklisted for their criticism of Park’s government. The artists had expressed support for liberal opposition parties or criticized Park’s conservative government and its policy failures, including failed rescue efforts after the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking that killed around 300 people

Swedish Academy Permanent Secretary Mats Malm (left) announces South Korean author Han Kang as the recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden on October 10, 2024 The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang, whose work confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life, who was honored “for her intense prose poetry that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” said the Swedish Academy. (AFP/Jonathan Nackstrand)

Han’s Nobel win came as a surprise to award watchers on Thursday, as it had not featured in speculation before the announcement. Last year, the award went to Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse, whose works are among the most performed of any contemporary playwright in the world.

The Academy has long been criticized for the overrepresentation of white Western authors among its selections.

With no official list, experts had speculated that this year could turn the spotlight even further.

Eurocentric, male affair

Since it was awarded in 1901, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been a Eurocentric and male affair. Of the 121 awardees, only 18 have been women. But the Academy has made progress in this regard, crowning nine women in the past two decades.

While 30 English-language and 16 French-language authors have won, Han is the first South Korean to win.

Similarly, there has only been one Arab writer who has won: the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz in 1988.

The 18-member Swedish Academy has undergone major reforms since a devastating period #MeToo the scandal of 2018, promising a more global and gender-equal literature prize.

Since the scandal, he has honored four women, including Han. The others are the French Annie Ernaux, the American poet Louise Gluck and the Polish Olga Tokarczuk and three men: the Austrian writer Peter Handke, the Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah and Fosse.

The Academy is also known for its penchant for bringing lesser-known authors to a wider audience.

This was the case in 2021, when Zanzibar-born British author Abdulrazak Gurnah was chosen for his work exploring exile, colonialism and racism, and in 2016, when he won the folk icon American rock Bob Dylan.

The Nobel Prize comes with a diploma, a gold medal and a prize of one million dollars.

Han will receive his award from King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of the scientist and creator of the Alfred Nobel Prize.