South Korean Author Gets Nobel Prize In Literature, Commended For 'Intense Poetic Prose That Exposes Fragility Of Human Life'

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and 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 her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose," the release said.

She comes from a literary background, her father being a reputed novelist. Alongside her writing, she has also devoted herself to art and music, which is reflected throughout her entire literary production.

Her work is characterised by double exposure to pain, a correspondence between mental and physical torment with close connections to Eastern thinking as seen in her Convalescence from 2013.

Born in 1970 in the South Korean city of Gwangju, Han Kang began her career in 1993 with the publication of a number of poems in the magazine ‘Literature and Society’. Her prose debut came in 1995.

Her major international breakthrough came with the novel ‘The Vegetarian’. Written in three parts, the book portrays the violent consequences that ensue when its protagonist decides to not eat meat.