Han Kang, South Korean Writer, Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature committee announced on Thursday, October 11, that Ms. Han Kang, a writer from South Korea, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for her "poetic prose that confronts historical wounds and reveals the fragility of human life." Anders Olsson, the chair of the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy, stated in his announcement: "She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, and the living and the dead, and with her poetic and experiential style, she is an innovator in contemporary prose." Han Kang, who is the first South Korean writer and the eighteenth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in 1980 into a literary family, with her father being a well-known novelist. She began her career in 1997 by publishing several poems in the magazine "Literature and Society," and her first short story collection was published in 1999 under the title "Love in Yeosu." In 2016, she received the International Man Booker Prize for her novel "The Vegetarian," which was her first novel translated into English, establishing her as an international author. Among the writers speculated to be contenders for this year's Nobel Prize were Chinese author Can Xue, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Australian Gerald Murnane, and Canadian Anne Carson. Mats Malm, the secretary of the Swedish Academy, mentioned in a press conference that he spoke with Han Kang over the phone, adding, "She was having an ordinary day and had just finished dinner with her son." "The Vegetarian" tells the story of Yeong-hye, a dutiful wife who, after battling terrifying and recurring nightmares against social norms, decides to stop eating meat, raising her family's concerns that she is mentally ill. After receiving the Booker Prize for "The Vegetarian," she stated in an interview that she suffered from severe arthritis and wrote the first two parts of the novel using a felt-tip pen, typing the last part with two pens held upside down. She remarked, "Even today, when I hear about the 'success' of this novel, I feel uncomfortable." In her novel "Human Acts," she focuses on the massacre of hundreds of unarmed students and civilians by South Korean military forces in Gwangju in 1980, where she grew up, addressing historical wounds. The Nobel committee stated that she approaches "witness literature" in this work. Films have been made based on her two books, "The Vegetarian" and "The Wounds," both directed by Lim Woo-sung. The Nobel Prizes have been awarded since 1901, as per the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish merchant and inventor of dynamite, by the Swedish Academy. The cash prize for the Nobel Prize in Literature is 11 million Swedish kronor (approximately 1.1 million dollars), and its awarding is always accompanied by praise and criticism. The failure to award it to giants like Russian Leo Tolstoy, French Émile Zola, and Irish James Joyce has raised questions about its credibility among a group of book lovers. The awarding of the 2016 prize to American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, although praised for a "fundamental reconsideration of what literature is," was deemed by some critics as an insult to more traditional writers. Nevertheless, the prize amount and being on a list that includes Irish W.B. Yeats, American Ernest Hemingway, and Colombian Gabriel García Márquez remains tempting for writers.