Chronicler of human fragility and resilience, Han Kang becomes South Korea’s first Nobel Literature Laureate

New Delhi: South Korean author and poet Han Kang, who came to global prominence with her unsettling novel “The Vegetarian” (2015), about a woman seeking to reclaim her agency through her food choices but coming to grief in an insensitive and exploitative patriarchal society, was on Thursday awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024 “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.

“In her oeuvre, Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. 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,” the Swedish Academy said in the award citation.

The choice of Han, who is the 117th recipient overall of the top literary award, the 18th woman winner, and the second South Korean Nobel laureate after President Kim Dae-jung – who won the Peace Prize in 2000, indicates that the selection committee cast its eyes wider this year, after choosing Norwegian literateur Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable” last year.

Born in Gwangju in 1970, Han made her literary debut in 1993 when five of her poems including “Winter of Seoul” were published by the Korean magazine “Literature and Society”, while her first short story “The Scarlet Anchor”, which came out a year later, won a literary contest.

In 1995, she published her first book, “Love in Yeosu”, a collection of stories, but it was “The Vegetarian” (originally published in Korean in 2007), about Yeong-hye, who rebels against her family and friends by eschewing meat, which brought her literary renown.

Using the media of three interrelated stories, Han sketches the struggle and inner conflict of the protagonist from different perspectives and her tribulations – her bid to make her own diet choices peremptorily and forcibly rejected by both her husband and her authoritarian father, her erotic and aesthetic exploitation by her brother-in-law, a video artist who becomes obsessed with her passive body, and her ultimate committal to a psychiatric clinic, where in her delusion and self-destruction mode, she becomes a plant.

The work won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, making Han its first South Korean recipient.

Han also used her pen to bring sordid episodes from her country’s violent past to light.

In “Human Acts” (2016), she dwelt on the murder of hundreds of students and unarmed civilians in a massacre carried out by the South Korean army in 1980 in her hometown Gwangju, reflecting her long desire to chronicle the tragedy under the military dictatorship. How to prevent such sickening and traumatic violence from recurring was another motivation.

Singling out the work and comparing the motif to ancient Greek playwright Sophocles’ “Antigone”, the Swedish Academy said that her “style, as visionary as it is succinct, nevertheless deviates from our expectations of that genre, and it is a particular expedient of hers to permit the souls of the dead to be separated from their bodies, thus allowing them to witness their own annihilation”.

On the other hand, the autobiographical novel “The White Book”, dedicated to her older sister who died a few hours after birth, gathers fragments of text about things that are associated with the colour, and are visually supplemented by black and white photographs and wide white margins, as well as blank white pages after the last chapter. The effect is a stunning display of the imagery of human suffering yet provides a certain peace and tranquillity – and a celebration of life and human resilience, in its own way.

A 2002 novel (“Your Cold Hands”) about a sculptor who specialises in plaster casts of hands and whose source of inspiration is a student who was abused as a child and is now starving in protest, recently appeared in a German translation.

She has many other works to her credit, dealing with human pain, trauma, and fragility, both in historical as well as imaginary contexts and constructs.

A full-time writer in Seoul now, Hang was been conferred numerous awards in her country, including the Korean Novel Award, in 1999 – less than a decade after she became a published author. She has also taught creative writing for ten years at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.

IANS

3 share Nobel in Economics for explaining why some countries are rich and others poor

Stockholm: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences to three US economists for providing new insights into why there are such vast...

PIL in Delhi HC challenges permission given to Sikhs to carry kirpan in domestic flights

  New Delhi, Aug 18: The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought a response from the Centre and others on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against the permission granted to...

Interest in learning Chinese is increasing in India

  New Delhi: Of late, China has been attracting a lot of attention, be it in the field of politics, economics or military. It is no more a secluded country...

JCB Prize for Literature announces its 2022 Longlist

New Delhi: The 5th edition of the longlist is announced for the 2022 JCB Prize for Literature. The list of ten novels was selected by a panel of five judges:...

Bust of Annabhau Sathe – Father of Dalit Literature – adorns Moscow library campus

Mumbai/Moscow: In a unique honour, a bust of the Maharashtra-born Tukaram B. Sathe, famed as 'Annabhau Sathe', the Father of Dalit Literature - was inaugurated at the famed Margarita Rudomino...

“PM Modi is a true disciple of Baba Ambedkar,” says Ex-President Kovind on the release of book “Ambedkar and Modi”

New Delhi: Former President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday released a book titled "Ambedkar and Modi: Reformer's Ideas, Performer's Implementation" here in presence of Union Minister I&B Anurag Thakur, MoS...

Indian-American in 2022 National Book Awards shortlist

New York: Indian-American author Sarah Thankam Mathews is among the finalists for the 2022 National Book Awards, which will be announced on November 16 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York...

Anti-Hindi sentiment simmering in south, TN & Kerala CMs warn Centre

Amid raging controversy in southern states over the Union government’s alleged attempt to “impose Hindi language”, at least two states’ chief ministers – Tamil Nadu and Kerala – for now...

Artists can begin their journey right from abstract: Saleem Khurshid

New Delhi: "My paintings are abstract but they are as much about nature as realistic painting of any landscape, because I paint the spirit of nature not just its form...

Have archaeologists found Cleopatra’s lost tomb?

Cleopatra was the last of a series of rulers called the Ptolemies who ruled ancient Egypt for nearly 300 years Archeologist Ms Martinez said that if her theory about the...

Spanish all-time-great Carlos Saura to get Satyajit Ray award at 53rd IFFI

Mumbai:  Celebrated Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, who is one of the trinity of all-time greats of his country with Luis Bunuel and Pedro Almodovar, will be honoured with the Satyajit...

154 yrs after he died, ’emperor of romance’ Ghalib lives in his poetry

Mumbai: Even 154 years after his death, the legendary Urdu-Persian poet -- Mirza Beg Asadullah Khan, or just Mirza Ghalib -- often referred to as the 'emperor of romance', continues to...

Read Previous

Kerala Assembly unanimously passes resolution against ‘One Nation, One Election’ proposal

Read Next

28 killed in Israeli airstrike on school in Gaza

WP2Social Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com