Nobel Prize In Literature 2024: Han Kang Wins For Confronting Traumas And Exposing Life’s Fragility

South Korea’s Han Kang has won the 2024 Nobel Prize in literature. The author has been honoured “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” said the Swedish Academy.

The daughter of a reputed novelist, Kang (53) also devoted herself to art and music, which is reflected throughout her entire literary production.

BREAKING NEWS
The 2024 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” pic.twitter.com/dAQiXnm11z
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 10, 2024

After starting her career in 1993 with poems, she made her prose debut with a short story collection called ‘Love of Yeosu’ in 1995 and followed up with more prose works including novels and short stories.

According to the Swedish Academy, which gives the Nobel Prize in literature, her international breakthrough work came with ‘The Vegetarian’ in 2015. The three part book is about the protagonist Yeong-hye who faces violent consequences for refusing to submit to the norms of food intake like eating meat.

In the novel 소년이 온다 (2014; ‘Human Acts’, 2016), Han Kang – awarded this year’s #NobelPrize in Literature – employs as her political foundation a historical event that took place in the city of Gwangju, where she herself grew up and where hundreds of students and unarmed… pic.twitter.com/0LjY9tcxIV
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 10, 2024

Kang is hailed for her extreme life stories like the one in another of her most important works ‘Greek Lessons.’ It is about a young woman who lost her ability to speak after a series of traumatic experiences. She travels to ancient Greece and meets her teacher, who himself is losing his sight and the two fall in love. ‘Your Cold Hands,’ ‘The Wind Blows, Go’, ‘Human Acts,’ and ‘The White Book’ are some of her other notable works.

“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,” says the Swedish Academy.

Kang is the 121st recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature and she will receive a medal, a diploma and a prize money of $1 million.

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(Image: X/@TheNobelPrize)