South Korean writer Han Kang received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life.”
The prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy and is worth 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million).
Han Kang was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. She comes from a literary background and her father is a renowned novelist. She made her literary debut as a poet by publishing five poems, including “Winter in Seoul”, in the winter issue of Munhak-gwa-sahoe (Literature and Society) in 1993. The following year she began her career as a novelist by winning the 1994 Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Contest with “Red Anchor”. She published her first short story collection entitled Yeosu (Munji Publishing Company) in 1995. In 1998, she participated in the University of Iowa International Writing Program for three months in 1998 with support from the Arts Council Korea.
Her publications include a collection of short stories, Fruits of My Woman (2000), Fire Salamander (2012); novels such as Black Deer (1998), Your Cold Hands (2002), The Vegetarian (2007), Breath Fighting (2010) and Greek Lessons (2011), Human Acts (2014), The White Book (2016), I Do No Farewell take (2021). A collection of poems I Put The Evening in the Drawer (2013) was also published. Han Kang won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for 'The Vegetarian'.
Her most recent novel 'I Do Not Bid Farewell' was awarded the Medicis Prize in France in 2023 and the Emile Guimet Prize in 2024.
Han Kang's work is characterized by this double exposure of pain, a similarity between mental and physical torment with close ties to Eastern thought, the committee said.
Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible rules and exposes the fragility of human life in each of her 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 of contemporary prose, according to the Nobel Prize Committee.