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Authors Guild Congratulates Han Kang on the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature

Literary Culture

October 10, 2024

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The Authors Guild is thrilled to congratulate Han Kang on receiving the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. In announcing the award, Anders Olsson, chairman of the Academy’s Nobel Committee, praised Kang’s distinctive literary voice and her profound empathy: “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.” 

Olsson further commended Kang for her “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” depicted in her works. She is the first South Korean author to receive this prestigious honor, bringing well-deserved recognition to the rich literary tradition of her country.

Her breakthrough novel The Vegetarian (originally published in Korean in 2007, in English in 2015), which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, tells the story of Yeong-hye, a woman who decides to give up eating meat after a series of disturbing dreams. The Academy noted the protagonist’s descent into delusion, saying she “is exploited erotically and aesthetically by her brother-in-law, a video artist who becomes obsessed with her passive body,” and “sinks ever deeper into a psychosis-like condition expressed through the ‘flaming trees,’ a symbol for a plant kingdom that is as enticing as it is dangerous.”

In Human Acts (2014), Kang delves into the 1980 Gwangju Uprising in South Korea, exploring the massacre of hundreds of students and civilians by the military. Through multiple perspectives, she examines the long-lasting impact of historical trauma on individuals and society. Her work The White Book (2016) is a meditation on the color white, blending fiction, essay, and poetry to explore themes of loss, grief, and the fragility of life.

More recently, Kang published Greek Lessons (2023), a novel that intertwines the stories of a woman losing her voice and a man losing his sight, examining the nature of language, communication, and human connection. Her latest work, We Do Not Part (forthcoming in English in 2025), which Kang recommends as a starting point for new readers, continues her exploration of how the past influences the present.

The Nobel committee highlighted the distinctive qualities of Kang’s writing, noting that it is marked by a “double exposure of pain, intertwining mental and physical suffering, closely linked to Eastern philosophies.” Committee member Anna-Karin Palm further elaborated on Kang’s themes and style, stating that she addresses “trauma, pain, and loss,” whether on an individual or collective scale, with “the same compassion and care.” Palm described Kang’s lyrical writing as “both tender and brutal,” highlighting the powerful duality present in her work.

Congratulations once again to Kang on this well-deserved recognition of her extraordinary talent and literary achievements.