Han is the 18th woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature – and the first woman among the Nobel Prize winners announced so far this year. The decision is not an unknown one, but it is surprising: the South Korean, who was born on November 27, 1970 in the capital of the province of Gwangju, was not on the list and who achieved international success in 2016 with the novel. “The Vegetarian“.
Han is also known to German readers thanks to his book, which won the Booker International Prize. The story revolves around a South Korean housewife and her passive rebellion in a rigidly conforming society. The Booker Prize jury praised the “moving and suggestive” novel, which “surprises the depth of its strangeness”.
In the biography sketched at the beginning of a “completely invisible” woman who decides to become a vegetarian, it turns into a wonderful story full of depth and passion of the novel, also made into a film in 2009, in which the rejection of norms is the reason with a great life. crack in the smooth social surface.
A big surprise for Han too
“I was able to talk to Han Kang on the phone,” Malm said when the winner was announced. “She looked like she was having a normal day – she had just had dinner with her son. She wasn’t really prepared for it, but we started discussing the preparations for December.” With the Nobel Prize in Literature, which will be awarded in December, Han has become the most popular author in her home country.
Han Kang of South Korea won the Nobel Prize in Literature
Han Kang of South Korea will be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. She is the 18th woman to receive the prize and the first among the Nobel Prize winners announced so far this year.
Korea’s most important literary voice
The German Aufbau Verlag, which has published a novel since 2016, praises Han on its homepage as “Korea’s most important literary voice”. Her works, which consciously play with the literary traditions of the world, especially deal with the discouragement of modern people and the loss of communication and identity.
“Han’s empathy with vulnerable situations, often female, is evident and reinforced by his metaphorically charged prose,” said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and is an innovator in contemporary prose with her poetic and experimental style.”
Aufbau-Verlag
Han made her breakthrough with “The Vegetarian” – originally published in 2007. The autobiography “White” was also nominated for the Booker Prize.
“White” and “Greek Lessons”
The South Korean, who grew up in Seoul from the age of eleven, celebrated her debut in 1993 with poems published in a magazine, and two years later she published her first collection of short stories. Her father was already a famous author.
Hans’ novel “Weiß” (published in German in 2020), in which she mourns the death of her sister, who died immediately after birth, was also nominated for the Booker Prize. She previously received the Italian Malaparte Award for “Human Work” (2017). The book is about a student uprising in 1980, which was met with violence by the military regime at the time.
Aufbau Verlag recently published “Your Cold Hands” and “Greek Lessons”. As in “The Vegetarian,” the South Korean author again deals with people in exceptional physical and mental situations – this time based on the story of a mute woman and her Greek teacher, whose eyesight is increasingly failing more every day.
Gasser (ORF) as a Nobel Prize winner for literature
This year’s Nobel Prize for Literature goes to South Korean writer Han Kang. Katja Gasser from the cultural editorial team with an analysis of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
“A successful choice”
The Nobel Prize jury is reliably surprised, ORF literary expert Katja Gasser said that Han was not on any of the betting providers’ lists. But the author is also well known in German-speaking countries since her success with “The Vegetarian.” “His literature represents a mixture of grotesque and rebellion and provides x-ray images not only of South Korean society.”
The German literary critic Denis Scheck, who considers the South Korean freestyle a successful choice, has also already spoken out. “The academy has shown good luck,” Scheck told dpa shortly after the award was announced. The surprise was “a pleasant one,” said Scheck, who praised Hans’ “really wonderful stories.”
2023 Fosse, 2022 Ernaux
In the last two years, Norway’s Jon Fosse and Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature. At that time, the former two were among the favorite circle.
This year it was expected that the jury would again focus more on “the world” – and that a woman could be chosen. One constant of the Nobel Prize in Literature throughout its 123-year history is that the award has almost always gone to male authors from Europe. Before Han received the award, only 17 of the 120 winners were women, eight of them in the last 20 years.
Award ceremony on 10 December
The Nobel Prize is worth eleven million Swedish crowns (about 970,000 euros) and is the most prestigious literary prize in the world. The award ceremony will take place on December 10 in Stockholm, the anniversary of the death of inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.