The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to 53-year-old South Korean novelist Han Kang for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. Her works include The Vegetarian, The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons.
“I was able to talk to Han Kang on the phone,” said Swedish Academy permanent secretary Mats Malm after announcing the winner. “She was having an ordinary day it seemed – had just finished supper with her son. She wasn’t really prepared for this, but we have begun to discuss preparations for December” – when Han will be presented with the Nobel prize.
“I’m so surprised and absolutely I’m honoured,” Han said, in a phone interview shared by the Swedish Academy. “I grew up with Korean literature, which I feel very close to. So I hope this news is nice for Korean literature readers, and my friends and writers.”
According to Korean news reports, some online bookstores were brought down by an influx of traffic following the announcement, and multiple government hearings were paused as officials cheered the news. In a statement, Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol congratulated Han: “You converted the painful wounds of our modern history into great literature,” he said. “I send my respects to you for elevating the value of Korean literature.”
Han’s novels, novellas, essays and short story collections have variously explored themes of patriarchy, violence, grief and humanity. Her 2007 novel The Vegetarian, which was translated into English in 2015 by Deborah Smith, won the International Booker prize in 2016.
Han is the first South Korean author and 18th woman to win the prize. Her “empathy for vulnerable, often female, lives is palpable, and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose,” said Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee. “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”
“Han Kang is a visionary writer, as deep as she is subtle” said her literary agent Laurence Laluyaux, adding that she is “so very thrilled that her work which is already read with such passion internationally will now be read even more widely.”
“I have long known that Han Kang is one of the most profound and skilled writers working on the contemporary world stage,” said novelist Deborah Levy. “Well done, dearest Han Kang, I’m so pleased that you are our 2024 Nobel.”
Novelist Max Porter, who edited Smith’s translation of The Vegetarian, said Han is “a vital voice and a writer of extraordinary humanity. Her work is a gift to us all. I am beyond thrilled she has been recognised by the Nobel committee. New readers will discover, and be changed by, her miraculous work.”
“This is such a well-deserved accomplishment” of Han’s, said writer and translator Bora Chung, whose collection of short stories Cursed Bunny, translated from Korean by Anton Hur, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker prize. “We are immensely proud of her!”
Han was born in Gwangju, a city in the south-west of South Korea, in 1970. When she was 10, her family moved to the Suyu-dong neighbourhood of Seoul. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University in the capital.
In 1993, Han made her literary debut with a series of five poems published in the Korean magazine Literature and Society. The following year she won the Seoul Shinmun spring literary contest with a story, Red Anchor.
Her first short story collection, Love of Yeosu, was published in 1995. In 1998 she participated in the University of Iowa International Writing Program for three months, supported by Arts Council Korea.
The Vegetarian was her first novel to be translated into English. Though the translation was criticised, it won the International Booker prize and helped earn Han worldwide readership.
Writer Boyd Tonkin, who chaired the 2016 International Booker judging panel, wrote in an X post that eight years ago, “media scoffers ridiculed our choice of an ‘obscure’ Korean. But readers loved it”. Now, “many more will discover this unique vision and voice”, he added.
Kan’s 2014 novel, Human Acts, is about the May 1980 Gwangju massacre, when an uprising was brutally suppressed by the military. The novel “remembers and retells the Gwangju massacre by narrating how sufferings from this historical event came to be written into the everyday life and the bodies of the victims, witnesses and survivors, exploring this from the perspective of six people directly and indirectly impacted by this massacre,” said Hannah Hyun Kyong Chang, lecturer in Korean studies at the University of Sheffield.
Han’s latest novel, We Do Not Part, will be published in English in 2025, translated by E Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. The story follows a writer discovering the impact of the 1948-49 Jeju uprising on the family of her friend. The French translation of the novel won the prix Médicis Étranger in 2023.
“What a wonderful moment this is for Han Kang and for all who love her work,” said Simon Prosser, publishing director at Hamish Hamilton, Han’s UK publisher. “In writing of exceptional beauty and clarity she faces unflinchingly the painful question of what it means to be human – to be of a species which is simultaneously capable of acts of cruelty and acts of love. She sees and thinks and feels like no other writer.”
Han is “one of the greatest living writers”, according to novelist Eimear McBride. “She is a voice for women, for truth and, above all, for the power of what literature can be. This is a very richly deserved win.”
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