Nobel Prize in Literature goes to S. Korean author
South Korean author Han Kang has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2024.
After three days of Nobel prizes honoring work in the sciences, the Nobel Prize 2024 in literature was announced by the Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy. She is the first South Korean writer to win the coveted award.
The Nobel Prize 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,” the Academy said.
Han Kang was born in 1970 in the South Korean city of Gwangju before moving with her family to Seoul at the age of nine.
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, according to the Academy’s media statement.
She began her career in 1993 with the publication of a number of poems in the South Korean magazine Literature and Society. Her prose debut came in 1995 with the short story collection ‘Love of Yeosu’.
Her major international breakthrough came with the novel ‘The Vegetarian.’
The three-part novel portrays the violent consequences that ensue when its protagonist, Yeong-hye, refuses to conform to food intake norms. Her decision not to eat meat is met with different reactions.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023 was awarded to Norwegian author Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”
In 2022, the Nobel Prize was awarded to French author Annie Ernaux “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she exposes the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”
This year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper for decoding protein design and structures.
Nobel announcements opened on Monday (Oct. 7, 2024), with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. Two founding fathers of machine learning — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the physics prize on Tuesday ( October 8, 2024).
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday (Oct. 11, 2024), and the economics award on Oct. 14.
The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($ 1 million) from a legacy left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to accept their awards at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.