OCTOBER 11, 2024

Nobel prize in literature 2024: The power of prose

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang for “intense poetic prose”, as announced by the Nobel committee in Stockholm.

Image: han-kang.net

She is best known for her novel “The Vegetarian” (2007, English 2015), which depicts the violent consequences of the protagonist's choice to be vegetarian as  resistance to a male-dominated Korean society.

Image: wikipedia.org

Han Kang began her career in 1993 by publishing poems in the Korean magazine “Literature and Society”. The short story collection “Love of Yeosu” was her debut in prose. 

Image: han-kang.net

“For her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” the Nobel committee said.

“You converted the painful wounds of our modern history into great literature,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said as he congratulated the author.

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Han Kang is the first South Korean author and the 18th woman to win a Nobel Prize in literature. She is also the second South Korean to win a Nobel Prize.

Image: nobelprize.org

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