It was announced on Thursday that the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to South Korean author Han Kang.
Kang is the first South Korean author and Asian female writer to win the award.
Bestowed on the author of any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, produced “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, the Nobel Prize in Literature is considered the world's most prestigious literary award.
The Swedish Academy honoured Kang for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.
The acclaimed author’s works include the novels The Vegetarian, the first Korean language novel to win the International Booker Prize for fiction (2016), The Mongolian Monk, recipient of the 2005 Yi Sang Literary Award, The White Book, shortlisted for the 2018 International Booker Prize, and 2021’s We Do Not Part, its French translation winning the Prix Médicis Étranger in 2023.
Kang made her literary debut as a poet by publishing five poems, including Winter in Seoul, in the winter issue of Munhak-gwa-sahoe (Literature and Society) in 1993. She began her career as a novelist the next year by winning the 1994 Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Contest with Red Anchor. She published her first short story collection Yeosu in 1995.
Praise for Kang's work:
The Vegetarian
“... a bracing, visceral, system-shocking addition to the Anglophone reader’s diet. It is sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colours and disturbing questions ... an extraordinary experience.” — Daniel Hahn, The Guardian, January 24 2015
The White Book
“... formally daring, emotionally devastating and deeply political.” — Katie Kitamura, The New York Times, February 25 2019
Greek Lessons
“... this novel gives language a much more active role. Equally wonderful and terrible, both insufficient to human purposes and too powerful to tame, it becomes a character itself, a force that must be confronted.” — Sarah Chiyaha, The Atlantic, May 4 2023
Han Kang awarded 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature
It was announced on Thursday that the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to South Korean author Han Kang.
Kang is the first South Korean author and Asian female writer to win the award.
Bestowed on the author of any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, produced “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, the Nobel Prize in Literature is considered the world's most prestigious literary award.
The Swedish Academy honoured Kang for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.
The acclaimed author’s works include the novels The Vegetarian, the first Korean language novel to win the International Booker Prize for fiction (2016), The Mongolian Monk, recipient of the 2005 Yi Sang Literary Award, The White Book, shortlisted for the 2018 International Booker Prize, and 2021’s We Do Not Part, its French translation winning the Prix Médicis Étranger in 2023.
Kang made her literary debut as a poet by publishing five poems, including Winter in Seoul, in the winter issue of Munhak-gwa-sahoe (Literature and Society) in 1993. She began her career as a novelist the next year by winning the 1994 Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Contest with Red Anchor. She published her first short story collection Yeosu in 1995.
Praise for Kang's work:
The Vegetarian
“... a bracing, visceral, system-shocking addition to the Anglophone reader’s diet. It is sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colours and disturbing questions ... an extraordinary experience.” — Daniel Hahn, The Guardian, January 24 2015
The White Book
“... formally daring, emotionally devastating and deeply political.” — Katie Kitamura, The New York Times, February 25 2019
Greek Lessons
“... this novel gives language a much more active role. Equally wonderful and terrible, both insufficient to human purposes and too powerful to tame, it becomes a character itself, a force that must be confronted.” — Sarah Chiyaha, The Atlantic, May 4 2023
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