Han Kang has won the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy announced this Thursday from its headquarters in Stockholm. The jury highlighted his “intense poetic prose which confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life”. The winner is part of a new class of young South Korean authors, which also includes Kim Hye-jin, awarded the prestigious Daesan literary prize in her country, Kim Ae said. (It’s summer outside) and Cho Nam-joo (What Miss Kim knows).
Kang’s victory was a surprise, since his name was not among the favorites of the groups, which other authors have highlighted such as the Anglo-Indian Salman Rushdie, the Japanese Yoko Ogawa and Yoko Tawada, the Argentinian Caesar Aira, the Chinese Can Xue. , Australians Gerald Murnane and Alexis Wright; Canadians Anne Carson and Margaret Atwood; and the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Kang succeeds Norwegian writer and playwright Jon Fosse, last year’s winner. Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, revealed that the novelist had had “a normal day and had just had dinner with her son” when she received the call from the institution.
The winner was born in Gwangju (South Korea) in 1970 and began her career as a novelist after winning the Seoul Spring Shinmun Literary Competition in 1994. Her first novel, The vegetarian (Rata), won the International Booker Prize in 2016. Set in Seoul, the film tells the story of Yeong-hye, a housewife who, after having a dream, decides to stop eating the meat. Her choice will lead to a series of devastating consequences for her and her family. “It shows the violent consequences that appear when the protagonist refuses to submit to the rules of food consumption,” described the secretary.
With his next book, Human actswon the Manhae Prize for Korean Literature and the Malaparte Prize in Italy in 2017. He discusses the Gwangju massacre, the popular uprising that occurred in 1980 against the dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan. The revolt was brutally suppressed by the South Korean army, leaving, according to official sources, 144 dead and 400 injured; and according to international non-governmental sources, between 1,000 and 2,000 deaths.
The author recalled this episode but without claiming to be a historical portrait, she chose to approach it from fiction, embracing the fantastic, introspection and the individuality of pain. Through the eyes of a teenager who cleaned up the victims’ bodies, the heartbreaking memories of a mother who lost her son and the inability of a woman raped during protests to overcome the trauma.
A year later, he was an International Booker finalist with The white paper. Kang worked as a professor at the Creative Writing Department of the Seoul Institute of the Arts until 2018. Currently, she devotes herself entirely to writing. His latest book is Greek lessons (Penguin Random House), released in bookstores last year, addressing loss, violence and the fragile relationship of our senses with the world.
The Nobel Prize for Literature, far from parity
The South Korean author became the 18th woman – compared to 102 men – to win the coveted prize established by Alfred Nobel. The first was the Swedish Selma Lagerlöf in 1909 and the last, until now, the French Annie Ernaux, in 2022. Between the two, other authors like Elfriede Jelinek, Doris Lessing, Herta Müller, Alice Munro, Svetlana Aleksievich, Olga Tokarczuck were recognized. with him and Louise Glück. Adding Kang’s, it would take 42 years for the prize to be awarded consecutively to a writer to reach parity.
Looking at the ranking between countries, English literature maintains a clear domination in the list of winners, with 31 winners, ahead of French (15), German (14) and Hispanic (11), which is no longer recognized since 2010 with Peruvian literature. Mario Vargas Llosa. In 1904, the Spaniard José Echegaray opened the list of Hispanic authors, which included compatriots like Jacinto Benavente (1922), Juan Ramón Jiménez (1956), Vicente Aleixandre (1977) and Camilo José Cela (1989). The list of winners in Spanish is completed by the Chileans Gabriela Mistral (1945) and Pablo Neruda (1971), the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967), the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez (1982) and the Mexican Octavio Paz (1990).
