Women of the World: 2024’s Nobel Prize in Literature Winner, South Korean author Han Kang

In my opinion, the most recent Nobel Prize in Literature was a long time coming. After endless critical acclaim and countless awards, Kang finally received the highest award that literature has to offer. From her cult classic The Vegetarian, to more recent endeavours such as Greek Lessons, Kang explores real societal issues through her weird and wonderful narratives. These ideas are intertwined through her lyrical writing style, often blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, poetry, and prose. That is why, “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”, Han Kang is an icon of the literary world, in both South Korea, and beyond.

Han Kang was born in Gwangju in 1970, and studied literature at Yonsei University. Her family later moved to Seoul, where her father quit his job at a university, in order to become a full time writer. All of Kang’s stories explore the depth of humanity, where we go when at our lowest.

Perhaps her interest in the suffering of humanity started, she claims, when she discovered a photo album, secretly circulated, full of images of the Gwangju Uprising

Perhaps her interest in the suffering of humanity started, she claims, when she discovered a photo album, secretly circulated, full of images of the Gwangju Uprising. The uprising saw the massacre of students and pro-democracy protests. Kang believes that being exposed to such violence and corruption from an early age is one of her biggest influences for her current literary themes. She made her fiction debut in 1994, with the publication of her short story ‘The Scarlet Anchor’, which won the New Year’s Literary Contest. Since then, five of her novels have been translated into English, allowing international audiences to experience her literary prowess.

Her magnum opus comes in the form of her 2007 novel The Vegetarian. The novel starts on the seemingly normal premise of a woman, Yeong-hye, who, after having strange and violent dreams involving animals, decides to become a vegetarian. However, the novel quickly diverges into a psychological meditation on the suffering women face at the hands of sexism. Yeong-hye’s choice to stop eating meat is a choice to reclaim autonomy over her life and body, something which her husband desperately tries to stop. The novel is split into three parts, with each section demonstrating the impact that this attempt at reclaiming autonomy has over the people around Yeong-hye, and wider society.

Her fourth full-length novel, Greek Lessons was recently translated to English for the first time in 2024. The novel alternates between perspectives in order to tell the story of the blossoming relationship between our two unnamed protagonists.

The woman is grieving the collapse of her family and slowly losing her ability to speak

The woman is grieving the collapse of her family and slowly losing her ability to speak. Similarly, the man has also lost something important to his family, and is losing his ability to see. The two become close after the woman begins attending lessons in Ancient Greek, taught by the man, in an attempt to reclaim some power over her language. A beautiful portrait of love and loss, the novel also explores the importance of language, and the ways in which it can shape, or destroy, our identity.

Kang’s most recent entry into the literary world comes in the form of her 2021 novel We Do Not Part. Here, Kang not only continues her exploration of themes of womanhood, friendship, and violence but explicitly explores a largely undiscussed part of Korean history. The novel focuses on the friendship between friends Kyungha and Inseon, but the real heart of the story lies in the setting. Kang sets her novel at the time of the Jeju Uprising, which lasted from April 1948 to May 1949. The uprising and its repression were notable for the extreme violence that took place, seeing upwards of 30,000 deaths, with effects still lingering today. Here, Kang once again delves into the lowest points of humanity, but does so explicitly through her own homeland.

Kang’s unique style and fantastically disturbing narratives have not gone unrewarded. In 2016, she won the International Man Booker Prize for The Vegetarian, with this being the first time the prize had ever been awarded for a Korean language novel. Most notably, she won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, with her being both the first Asian woman to win the prize, and only the second Korean to win any form of Nobel Prize. She has also received much praise within Korean literary circles, winning prizes such as the Yi Sang Literary Award.

Han Kang continues to stand out as one of the most unique and interesting writers currently working today. Her ability to explore such a range of disturbing, psychologically taxing topics in such sensitive and nuanced ways is a testament to her writing ability. From her bold and intense writing style blending poetry and prose, to her haunting narratives which play with fantasy and reality, Kang is a master at blurring the lines, and challenging our own perceptions of the world around us.