After the Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse last year, the Nobel committee awarded the South Korean novelist Han Kang on Thursday October 10. Han Kang, who writes poems, short stories and novels in Korean, was awarded “for his intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life”explained the jury in a press release.
Alongside writing, she also devoted herself to art and music, which is reflected in all of her literary output. “ Han Kang’s work is characterized by this double exposure of pain, a correspondence between mental torment and physical torment, in close connection with Eastern thought.said the Swedish Academy.
The author, born November 27, 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea, “began his career with the publication of poems in the magazine Literature and society », recalls the Nobel committee on “His prose debut took place in 1995 with a collection of short stories, quickly followed by several other prose works, both novels and short stories. »
Innovative
Han Kang a “a unique awareness of the links between the body and the soul, the living and the dead, and, through her poetic and experimental style, she is considered innovative in the field of contemporary prose”Nobel committee president Anders Olsson told the press.
Han Kang broke through internationally with his novel Vegetarian (2007). Written in three parts, the book depicts the violent consequences of its protagonist Yeong-hye’s refusal to eat meat, leading to her brutal rejection by those around her.
She is the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The only other South Korean to win a Nobel Peace Prize was in 2000, when former President (1998 to 2003) Kim Dae-Jung was crowned for “his work for peace and reconciliation with North Korea”.
Daughter of the writer Han Sung-won, the author received the Emile-Guimet Prize for Asian Literature in 2024.
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