South Korea's Han Kang wins 2024 Nobel Prize in literature
The Swedish Academy has made its decision. Han Kang, a writer from South Korea, has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. As stated in the justification, the prize was awarded for "her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life."
Han Kang, in her works, "confronts historical traumas and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose," can be read in the justification.
Han Kang was born in 1970 in Kwangju, South Korea. She graduated in Korean philology from Yonsei University.
Her third novel, The Vegetarian, was her most popular. Published in 2007, it was translated into many languages and won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.
The history of the Nobel Prize
The Swedish Academy has awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature since 1901. Its 18 members include Swedish writers, poets, philologists, and historians.
The Nobel Committee, this year consisting of six people, works on selecting the laureate. Each year, the names of the candidates for the award can be submitted not only by members of the Swedish Academy but also by members of other similar institutions, professors of literature and philology, laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and chairpersons of literary associations. The nominations are kept secret and are revealed only fifty years after the prize is awarded.
