By Justyna Pawlak, Simon Johnson
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -South Korean creator Han Kang received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historic traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”, the award-giving physique mentioned on Thursday.
The prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy and is price 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million).
“She has a novel consciousness of the connections between physique and soul, the dwelling and the lifeless, and in her poetic and experimental fashion has develop into an innovator in modern prose,” Anders Olsson, chairman of the Academy’s Nobel Committee, mentioned in a press release.
Han Kang, the primary South Korean and the 18th lady to win the literature prize, started her profession in 1993 with the publication of a variety of poems within the journal Literature and Society, whereas her prose debut got here in 1995 with the brief story assortment “Love of Yeosu”.
In a phone interview with the Academy after the prize was introduced, she mentioned her celebrations can be low-key. “After this cellphone name I would prefer to have tea with – I do not drink so – I will have tea with my son and I will have a good time it quietly tonight.”
Han mentioned she had simply completed dinner when she heard from the Academy. She mentioned she was “so shocked and … completely I am honoured”.
Born in 1970, she comes from a literary background, her father being a well-regarded novelist.
Han Kang received the Man Booker Worldwide Prize for fiction for her novel “The Vegetarian” in 2016, the primary of her novels to be translated into English and thought to be her main worldwide breakthrough.
‘THE VEGETARIAN’
All through her writing, Han Kang has explored the themes of grief, violence, sexuality and psychological well being.
In “The Vegetarian”, after fighting grotesque recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye, a dutiful spouse, rebels in opposition to societal norms, forsaking meat and stirring concern amongst her household that she is mentally sick.
“She is exploited erotically and aesthetically by her brother-in-law, a video artist who turns into obsessed together with her passive physique (and) … sinks ever deeper right into a psychosis-like situation expressed by the ‘flaming bushes’, an emblem for a plant kingdom that’s as engaging as it’s harmful,” based on the Academy’s description.
In an interview with the Booker Prizes revealed final yr, Han Kang described how the writing of “The Vegetarian” had been a tough interval in her life the place she questioned whether or not ought to be capable to end the novel and even survive as an creator.
“I used to be affected by extreme arthritis in my fingers, so I wrote the primary two components at a leisurely tempo, utilizing a felt-tip pen that glided easily throughout the paper, after which typed out the final half holding two ballpoint pens the other way up,” she mentioned.
“To this present day, I really feel awkward after I hear concerning the novel’s ‘success’.”
HISTORICAL TRAUMA
Her concentrate on historic trauma is explored within the novel “Human Acts” by the 1980 bloodbath of lots of of scholars and unarmed civilians by the South Korean navy following a coup d’etat within the metropolis of Gwangju, the place she herself grew up.
Han Kang instructed Sweden’s DN each day in an interview in 2017 the occasions had left her household fighting survivors’ guilt for years, after they’d left the realm just a few months earlier than the killings.
In “We Do Not Half”, her newest novel attributable to be revealed in English in 2025, Han Kang “conveys the facility of the previous over the current”, and he or she selected it when requested within the phone interview with the Academy which ebook readers new to her work ought to begin with.
“I believe each author likes his or her most up-to-date ebook,” Han mentioned. “‘Human Acts’ is related immediately with this ebook. After which ‘The White Guide’ which could be very private ebook for me, as a result of it’s fairly autobiographical. And there may be ‘The Vegetarian’ however I really feel the beginning may very well be ‘We Do Not Half’.”
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol congratulated Han Kang in a Fb (NASDAQ:) put up: “You could have turned the painful scars of our trendy historical past into nice items of literature.”
The award additionally prompted a rush of curiosity for book-lovers at residence.
“I used to be having dinner with my buddies, and simply then I bought the information … I felt so good, so I paid for my good friend’s meal and ran simply to come back right here to get books written by Han Kang,” mentioned Kim Hanna, 36, talking at a bookstore in Seoul.
The Nobel prizes have been created by a bequest within the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and started in 1901.
Previous winners of the literature prize embody luminaries corresponding to Irish poet W.B. Yeats, American novelist Ernest Hemingway and Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
($1 = 10.3978 Swedish crowns)