The Nobel Prize in Literature 2024 was awarded to South Korean author Han Kang “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
- Han Kang began her career in 1993 with the publication of a number of poems in the magazine ‘Literature and Society’.
- Her prose debut came in 1995 with the short story collection ‘Love of Yeosu’, followed soon afterwards by several other prose works, both novels and short stories. Kang’s major international breakthrough came with the novel 채식주의자 (2007; ‘The Vegetarian’, 2015).
- Written in three parts, the book portrays the violent consequences that ensue when its protagonist Yeong-hye refuses to submit to the norms of food intake.
- Her decision not to eat meat is met with various, entirely different reactions.
