Updated October 10, 2024 at 07:42 AM ET
South Korean author Han Kang has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She is the first Korean writer and the eighteenth woman to win the award. In 2016, she won the International Booker Prize for her novel The Vegetarian. She was the first Korean writer to win that award as well.
The new laureate is the 121st winner of what鈥檚 widely seen as the most prestigious award in world literature. Founded by Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel, the award is intended for an author who has "produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.鈥� Nobel prizes have been awarded since 1901.
The writer, who is 53 years old, has established a readership far beyond her home country, wrote critic Leland Cheuk of her novel Greek Lessons.
Han Kang "has carved out an international reputation for doing unsettling, transgressive work that's as unpredictable as it is confrontational,鈥� he wrote. But this novel, about a woman who鈥檚 lost the ability to speak, and signs up to study ancient Greek with an instructor slowly losing his sight, contains 鈥渁 hopeful, and humane belief in the redemptive power of love.鈥�
鈥淭he reading experience is like that of watching a quiet indie film that tugs little by little at your heartstrings until you're rendered speechless with both sadness and hope by the final pages,鈥� he wrote.
In its , the Swedish Academy commended Han 鈥渇or her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.鈥�
鈥淚n her oeuvre,鈥� the Academy wrote, 鈥淗an Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.鈥�
In , Han spoke to the intensity and darkness in many of her books. 鈥淚 always feel I am questioning when I write novels, and I wanted to deal with my long-lasting question about human violence and the possibility or impossibility of refusing it,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd I will be happy if the readers could share my questions.鈥�
Han Kang joins the ranks of , , , and (a controversial pick .)
For the past few decades, the Nobel literature category has been dominated by white authors. Between 2000 and 2023, only seven people of color have won. That鈥檚 a significant change from the Nobel literature awards of the 1980s and early 1990s, when authors of color from Egypt, Nigeria, Mexico, Japan, Saint Lucia and the U.S. all won within the same decade.
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