Han Kang Wins The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024

Posted on October 10, 2024

Writer and poet Han Kang has been awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024.

The Swedish Academy says she was awarded the Nobel Prize for "her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life."

Kang is the first South Korean winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

She has published both poetry and fiction. Her first novel, Black Deer, was published in 1998. This is not her first major book award. She also won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for The Vegetarian, which is her best known novel. It was also her first to be translated into English. Her novel, The White Book, made the shortlist for the 2018 International Booker Prize.

Kang's mother, Han Seung-won, is also a novelist. Kang also taught creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.

Kang's most recent novel, We Do Not Part, was published in 2021. Publisher Penguin Random House says the novel "tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history."

Image: Ill.: Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach