Han Kang, the acclaimed South Korean author of The Vegetarian and Human Acts, has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy praised Han’s “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
This is the first time a South Korean writer has won the prestigious award. Han is also the first Asian woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
“She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead,” said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel committee.
Han’s work often explores the darker aspects of human experience, including violence, grief, and the lingering impact of historical events. Her novel Human Acts, for example, is based on the Gwangju Uprising of 1980, in which pro-democracy protesters were killed by the South Korean military.
Readers around the world have connected with Han’s powerful and unsettling writing. “I emerge painfully transformed from all of Han Kang’s books,” said one reader. Another described her work as “a sucker punch.”
Han herself has said that writing is “a way of questioning for me.” She added, “I just try to complete my questions through the process of my writing and I try to stay in the questions, sometimes painful, sometimes—well—sometimes demanding.”
In a surprising turn, Han declined to hold a press conference or celebrate her win, citing the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. “With the war intensifying and people being carried out dead every day, how can we have a celebration or a press conference?” she said through her father.
