Han Kang, a South Korean author, has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the year’s first female Nobel laureate. During the ceremony, she was recognized “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” She received 11 million krona (£810,000), the sum given to each Nobel Prize laureate this year.
Han Kang is the first South Korean to earn the Nobel Prize, and the Nobel Prize board praised her as having “devoted herself to music and art.” The statement further stated that her work encompasses genres, including violence, loss, and patriarchy.
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Life and Education of Han Kang
Han is the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won, and she was born in the South Korean city of Gwangju in 1970. She relocated to Seoul at a young age and attended Yonsei University, where she studied Korean literature. In 1993, she published five poems, and the following year, she made her fiction debut with a short story.
In 2016, she won the International Man Booker Prize for “The Vegetarian,” which was first translated into English by Deborah Smith in 2015. Han, who teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and is working on her sixth novel, has had her work published in over 30 languages.
Major themes in her writings
Han Kang’s literary works frequently address themes of human fragility, existential crisis, and the exploration of historical trauma. In her stories, she delves into her characters’ physical and psychological experiences. Her writings stand out for their depth and grasp of the relationship between body and soul.
Han Kang’s poetic style and experimental approach to prose set her work apart in the literary world. She does not avoid the harsh realities of life, but rather utilizes them to uncover deeper truths about human existence.
Literary Works of Han Kang
The Vegetarian
The Vegetarian, Han Kang’s international breakout novel, won the International Booker Prize in 2016. It is the story of a middle-aged Korean woman who decides one night that she will no longer eat meat. The vegetarian remains silent throughout the novel; her experience is relayed in three separate voices by her husband, brother-in-law, and older sister.
Their many reactions, ranging from abhorrence to sexual curiosity to poisonous envy, contrast sharply with the woman’s quiet reluctance to back down or confess remorse for the dishonor she has brought upon her family. These comments provide a clear picture of a patriarchal culture obsessed with careerism and sometimes authoritarian, social norms and practices.
Greek Lessons
A short but psychologically insightful novel is an intimate depiction of two people who have lost, or are in the process of losing, the most important links connecting them to the outside world. After experiencing domestic abuse, the female protagonist has retreated into muteness, while the male protagonist is gradually losing his sight owing to an inheritable condition. The woman is taking Ancient Greek lessons to regain her capacity to speak, as a language no longer spoken cannot harm her, while the man who is losing his sight is her Greek teacher.
A delicate love story of sorts, the narrative follows their attempts to, if not overcome, then at least find common ground in their shared loss. It’s also a book about language, how words can help us shape and meaning our external and inner worlds while simultaneously tearing at and destroying what is most fragile in all of us: our identity.
Human Acts
Human Acts provides an ambiguous but horrifying and realistic look into Han Kang’s country’s recent history. The novel chronicles the lives of many people who either participated in, or were innocently caught up in, a student uprising in May 1980 in the town of Gwangju, where the author grew up, an uprising that was brutally crushed by the then-ruling military junta. The line between offender and victim, body and soul, or even living and dead is blurring, is represented in a language that is both straightforward and subtle. Han’s novels redefine the concept of “living with the past,” viewing it as something that cannot be avoided or denied.
