South Korean writer Han Kang He won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature this Thursday, as announced by the Swedish Academy at 1 p.m. from Stockholm. The jury rewarded him “for his intense poetic prose, which confronts trauma and exposes the fragility of human life”.
The prize is endowed with an endowment of 10 million Swedish crownsthe equivalent of 900,000 euros or 1 million dollars.
The permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Mats Malm, was responsible for announcing the jury’s decision to the press and to the writer herself, a few minutes before, by telephone. “She had an ordinary day, finishing dinner with her son. She wasn’t prepared for this, but we started talking about preparations for December. We can’t wait to meet her here,” she said. reported.
According to Anders Olsson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, “in his work, Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible rules and, in each of his 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 with her poetic and experimental style she has become an innovator in contemporary prose. »
Han Kang was born in Gwangju, South Korea in 1970, but has lived in Seoul since he was 9 years old. His origins are literary, since his father is a renowned novelist. In addition to writing, he also devoted himself to art and music, which is reflected in all his literary production.
Han Kang began his career in 1993 with the publication of several poems in the magazine 문학과사회 (“Literature and society”). His prose debut took place in 1995 with the collection of short stories 여수의 사랑 (“Yeosu’s Love”), followed shortly after by several other prose works, both novels and short stories. Among them the novel stands out 그대의 차가운 손 (2002; “Your Cold Hands”), which clearly shows Han Kang’s interest in art.
The book reproduces a manuscript left by a deceased sculptor, obsessed with making plaster casts of female bodies. There is a concern for human anatomy and the play between person and experience, where a conflict arises in the sculptor’s work between what the body reveals and what it hides. “Life is a sheet that bends over an abyss, and we live on it like masked acrobats,” says a telling sentence near the end of the book.
Han Kang’s big international success came with the novel 채식주의자 (2007; The vegetarian 2015). Written in three parts, the book describes the violent consequences that arise when its protagonist Yeong-hye refuses to submit to the rules of food intake. His decision not to eat meat provokes several completely different reactions. Her behavior is forcibly rejected by both her husband and her authoritarian father, and she is erotically and aesthetically exploited by her brother-in-law, a videographer obsessed with her passive body. Eventually, she is admitted to a psychiatric clinic, where her sister tries to save her and return her to a “normal” life. However, Yeong-hye sinks deeper and deeper into a state bordering on psychosis, expressed through the “burning trees”, symbol of a plant kingdom as attractive as it is dangerous.
A more plot-driven book is 바람이 분다, 가라 (“The Wind Blows, Go”) from 2010, a vast and complex novel about friendship and art, in which pain and the desire for transformation are strongly present.
Han Kang’s physical empathy for extreme life stories is reinforced by his increasingly charged metaphorical style. 희랍어 시간 ( Greek lessons 2023) from 2011 is a captivating portrait of an extraordinary relationship between two vulnerable people. A young woman who, after a series of traumatic experiences, has lost her speech, connects with her ancient Greek teacher, who is also losing her sight. From their respective faults, a fragile love story develops. The book is a beautiful meditation on loss, intimacy and the ultimate conditions of language.
Among the favorites, according to predictions circulating in the literary world, were authors such as Can Xue, Haruki Murakami, César Aira, Margaret Atwood, Anne Carson, Thomas Pynchon, Ersi Sotiropoulos and Gerald Murnane.
Over the past ten years, writers Jon Fosse, Annie Ernaux, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Louise Glück, Peter Handke, Olga Tokarczuk, Kazuo Ishiguro, Bob Dylan, Svetlana Aleksievich and Patrick Modiano have won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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