South Korean author Han Kang wins the 2024 Nobel prize in literature | Books

The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to 53-year-old South Korean novelist Han Kang for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historic traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. Her works embrace The Vegetarian, The White Guide, Human Acts and Greek Classes.

“I used to be in a position to discuss to Han Kang on the cellphone,” mentioned Swedish Academy everlasting secretary Mats Malm after asserting the winner. “She was having an odd day it appeared – had simply completed supper together with her son. She wasn’t actually ready for this, however we’ve got begun to debate preparations for December” – when Han might be introduced with the Nobel prize.

“I’m so stunned and completely I’m honoured,” Han mentioned, in a cellphone interview shared by the Swedish Academy. “I grew up with Korean literature, which I really feel very near. So I hope this information is sweet for Korean literature readers, and my buddies and writers.”

In accordance with Korean information reviews, some on-line bookstores had been introduced down by an inflow of site visitors following the announcement, and a number of authorities hearings had been paused as officers cheered the information. In a press release, Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol congratulated Han: “You transformed the painful wounds of our fashionable historical past into nice literature,” he mentioned. “I ship my respects to you for elevating the worth of Korean literature.”

Han’s novels, novellas, essays and brief story collections have variously explored themes of patriarchy, violence, grief and humanity. Her 2007 novel The Vegetarian, which was translated into English in 2015 by Deborah Smith, received the Worldwide Booker prize in 2016.

Han is the primary South Korean creator and 18th girl to win the prize. Her “empathy for weak, typically feminine, lives is palpable, and strengthened by her metaphorically charged prose,” mentioned Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee. “She has a novel consciousness of the connections between physique and soul, the dwelling and the lifeless, and in a poetic and experimental model has turn out to be an innovator in modern prose.”

“Han Kang is a visionary author, as deep as she is delicate” mentioned her literary agent Laurence Laluyaux, including that she is “so very thrilled that her work which is already learn with such ardour internationally will now be learn much more extensively.”

“I’ve lengthy identified that Han Kang is among the most profound and expert writers engaged on the modern world stage,” mentioned novelist Deborah Levy. “Effectively completed, dearest Han Kang, I’m so happy that you’re our 2024 Nobel.”

Novelist Max Porter, who edited Smith’s translation of The Vegetarian, mentioned Han is “an important voice and a author of extraordinary humanity. Her work is a present to us all. I’m past thrilled she has been recognised by the Nobel committee. New readers will uncover, and be modified by, her miraculous work.”

“That is such a well-deserved accomplishment” of Han’s, mentioned author and translator Bora Chung, whose assortment of brief tales Cursed Bunny, translated from Korean by Anton Hur, was shortlisted for the 2022 Worldwide Booker prize. “We’re immensely pleased with her!”

Han was born in Gwangju, a metropolis within the south-west of South Korea, in 1970. When she was 10, her household moved to the Suyu-dong neighbourhood of Seoul. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei College within the capital.

In 1993, Han made her literary debut with a sequence of 5 poems revealed within the Korean journal Literature and Society. The next yr she received the Seoul Shinmun spring literary contest with a narrative, Crimson Anchor.

Her first brief story assortment, Love of Yeosu, was revealed in 1995. In 1998 she participated within the College of Iowa Worldwide Writing Program for 3 months, supported by Arts Council Korea.

The Vegetarian was her first novel to be translated into English. Although the interpretation was criticised, it received the Worldwide Booker prize and helped earn Han worldwide readership.

Author Boyd Tonkin, who chaired the 2016 Worldwide Booker judging panel, wrote in an X submit that eight years in the past, “media scoffers ridiculed our selection of an ‘obscure’ Korean. However readers liked it”. Now, “many extra will uncover this distinctive imaginative and prescient and voice”, he added.

Kan’s 2014 novel, Human Acts, is in regards to the Could 1980 Gwangju bloodbath, when an rebellion was brutally suppressed by the navy. The novel “remembers and retells the Gwangju bloodbath by narrating how sufferings from this historic occasion got here to be written into the on a regular basis life and the our bodies of the victims, witnesses and survivors, exploring this from the attitude of six folks straight and not directly impacted by this bloodbath,” mentioned Hannah Hyun Kyong Chang, lecturer in Korean research on the College of Sheffield.

Han’s newest novel, We Do Not Half, might be revealed in English in 2025, translated by E Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. The story follows a author discovering the influence of the 1948-49 Jeju rebellion on the household of her buddy. The French translation of the novel received the prix Médicis Étranger in 2023.

“What a beautiful second that is for Han Kang and for all who love her work,” mentioned Simon Prosser, publishing director at Hamish Hamilton, Han’s UK writer. “In writing of remarkable magnificence and readability she faces unflinchingly the painful query of what it means to be human – to be of a species which is concurrently able to acts of cruelty and acts of affection. She sees and thinks and looks like no different author.”

Han is “one of many best dwelling writers”, in line with novelist Eimear McBride. “She is a voice for girls, for fact and, above all, for the ability of what literature might be. This can be a very genuinely-earned win.”