The Nobel Prize for Literature 2024 has been awarded to South Korean author Han Kang “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”, the Nobel Academy said on Thursday (October 10).
Literary world extended their warm greetings to the author for her exceptional win. “Her innovative approach to prose truly pushes the boundaries of contemporary literature—an incredibly deserving laureate!” wrote author Tomer Rozenberg.
According to the press statement, in her oeuvre, Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules 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 her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose,” the Nobel site mentions.
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Interestingly, she is the first South Korean writer to win the award, according to the Nobel Press Conference.
In 1993, when she was 23, Kang debuted as a poet in the magazine Literature and Society. Her prose debut came two years later with a short fiction collection, Love of Yeosu, before an international breakthrough with The Vegetarian (2007), a novel about a graphic designer who, one day, decides to stop eating might after a nightmare about human cruelty, evoking harsh reactions from her family, leading to a tailspin in fortune and health. The book won the International Booker Prize 2016 and was one of her first novels to be translated from Korean to English.
Anders Olsson, chairman, Nobel Committee stated that 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 with the short story collection Love of Yeosu, followed soon afterwards by several other prose works, both novels and short stories,” he said in a statement.
Kang’s writing was described by Olsson as “crossing the boundaries between art forms… with a broad span of genre”, particularly music and art. “Her poetic style comes out in The White Book (2016),” he added, referring to the story of a woman who writes an elegy to a sister she never knew, one who died shortly after birth. “This renders it less a novel and more a kind of ‘secular prayer book’, as it has been described,” said Olsson.
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On her approach to feminine gazes and vulnerability, Olsson referred to Greek Lessons (2023), a novel about a love affair between a young woman losing her speech and an old man, once her teacher, losing his sight. “The book is a beautiful meditation around loss, intimacy and the ultimate conditions of language,” he said.
We Do Not Part (2021) is a celebrated historical fiction novel by Kang about two friends who are mourning a devastating massacre that befell their families decades ago. “With imagery that is as precise as it is condensed, Kang not only conveys the power of the past over the present, but also, equally powerfully, traces the friends’ unyielding attempts to bring to light what has fallen into collective oblivion and transform their trauma into a joint art project, which lends the book its title,” said Olsson.
Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Nobel Committee, said, “I was able to talk to (Kang) on the phone. She was having an ordinary day, it seems, and had just finished supper with her son. She wasn’t really prepared for this… We look forward to meeting her.”
Can Xue, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, César Aira, Gerald Murnane and Thomas Pynchon were among the authors touted to win this year’s Nobel, known widely as the world’s most prestigious literary award. The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 117 times to 121 Nobel laureates between 1901 and 2024.
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Last year, Jon Fosse won the prestigious honour. The Nobel Literature Committee hailed the Norwegian author of plays, novels, and children’s books for giving “voice to the unsayable”.
Notably, the Academy is known for bringing lesser-known authors to a wider audience.
In her oeuvre, 2024 literature laureate Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules 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 her… pic.twitter.com/iS5KsU7GtM
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 10, 2024
Previously, the prize has been awarded to French author Annie Ernaux (2022), Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021), American poet and essayist Louise Glück ( 2020) and Austrian writer Peter Handke ( 2019).
The list of famous winners from yesteryears includes: WB Yeats (1923), GB Shaw (1925) Herman Hesse ( 1946), TS Eliot(1948), Pablo Neruda ( 1971) and Gabriel García Márquez (1982).
Each year, since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been announced for achievements in the sciences, literature and peace. The Prize was established in the will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite.
BREAKING NEWS
The 2024 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” pic.twitter.com/dAQiXnm11z— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 10, 2024
The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded by the Swedish Academy, Stockholm, Sweden.
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The Nobel Prize amount for 2024 is set at Swedish kronor (SEK) 11.0 million (over 8 crore 88 lakh) per full Nobel Prize, from a bequest “left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel” according to AP. “The laureates will receive their awards at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
With inputs from Udbhav Seth