Korean writer Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The 53-year-old fiction writer won the Man Booker International Prize for his 2007 novel The Vegetarian.
At the awards ceremony, she was praised “for her powerful poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life.”
The Nobel Prize Committee has awarded the literature prize since 1901. This is the 18th time a woman has won the prize.
Han is the first South Korean to win the prize, and the Nobel Prize committee described her as someone “devoted to music and art.”
The statement added that her work crosses boundaries and explores a wide range of genres – including violence, grief and patriarchy.
A turning point in her career came in 2016, when she won the International Booker Prize for The Vegetarian, which had been published nearly a decade earlier but was first translated into English in 2015 by Deborah Smith.
It describes the violent consequences of a woman who refuses to comply with food intake standards.
Han’s other works include “White Paper,” “Human Behavior” and “Greek Lessons.”
Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said at the ceremony that “she was not really ready” to win the prize.
“She had a unique awareness of the connection between body and soul, the living and the dead, and with her poetic and experimental style, she became an innovator in contemporary prose,” he added.
Han is the first female winner of the literary prize since it was awarded to French writer Anne Hernault in 2022.
She is also the first female Nobel Prize winner this year.
