The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded today, Thursday October 10, 2024, to the South Korean novelist Han Kang, for “her intense poetic prose which confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life”.
Han Kang, 53, becomes the first South Korean to win the award in literature. She succeeds Norwegian Jon Fosse, playwright, novelist and author of children’s books who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023.
Beginning her career in 1993 with the publication of poems in the journal Littérature et société then with short stories in the collection L’amour de Yeosu in 1995, the laureate “experienced a major international breakthrough” with the novel La Végétarienne in 2007. In In this triptych, the protagonist decides to change her diet and faces violent reactions from those around her and from society.
Along with writing, Han Kang, born in 1970, also devotes herself to art and music, which is reflected in all her literary production, the committee wrote in a press release. As in his novel Your cold hands published in 2002 or the intrigue novel, which mixes art and friendship, The wind blows, go ahead.
It should be remembered that, on Tuesday, the Royal Academy of Sciences awarded John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton the Nobel Prize in Physics for their fundamental work which enabled the development of artificial neural networks which have become essential in AI algorithms.
Awarded since 1901, the Nobel Prizes recognize people who have worked for “the benefit of humanity”, in accordance with the wish of their creator, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
The Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded for the first time in 1969, will be awarded on Monday October 14 and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in Oslo.