South Korean author Han Kang has been honoured with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature as the Norwegian Nobel Committee has recognised pain and fragility of human life as portrayed in her works. In a statement, the Committee has mentioned that Han won the Prize for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”! With this, the 53-year-old Han, best known for her 2007 novel The Vegetarian which traces mental illness and neglect of a woman from her family, has become the first Korean author and the first Asian woman writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature! She would receive the award on December 10, 2024 in Stockholm.

Han was born on November 27, 1970 in Gwangju of South Jeolla Province. She is the daughter of Han Seung-won, who is also an author. Han Seung-won primarily writes about people struggling against their fate in Jangheung.

Han’s literary journey began with verses in 1993 when five of her poems, including Winter in Seoul, found their places in the Winter Issue of the Literature and Society quarterly magazine. Next year, she published her first fiction The Scarlet Anchor as the short story won entry in the Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Contest. Han’s first story collection, titled A Love of Yeosu, was published in 1995. This publication helped her to grab the attention of readers mainly because of its precise and tightly narrated composition.

Since then, Han has penned a number of novels, including Black deer (1998), My woman’s fruits (2000), Your cold hands (2002), The vegetarian (2007), The wind blows, go (2010), Greek lessons (2011), Yellow pattern eternity (2012), Human acts (2014), White (2016), The White Book (2017), and We Do Not Part (2021). She won the Booker Prize in 2016 for The Vegetarian and the Prix Médicis (a French literary award) in 2023 for her latest novel I Do Not Bid Farewell.

The Nobel Committee has mentioned that one can find the mental and physical sufferings of human beings in Han’s works. She has always explored the impact of historical events on human lives and documented them in her writings. The sufferings of an individual and the society as a whole have mixed up in her novels.

Her 2024 novel Human Acts is a fine example of this as it is based on the democratisation uprising that occurred on May 18, 1980 in Gwangju. In this novel, the death of a boy provides the impetus for a dimensional look into the uprising and the lives of the people in that South Korean city. It may be noted that Human Acts won the Manhae Prize for Literature and Premio Malaparte (an Italian literary award).

Announcing the award, Mats Malm, the Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy, stressed in the second week of October 2024: “She was not really prepared for this, but we have begun to discuss preparations for December.”

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das