The theme of intense poetic prose confronting historical traumas and exposing the fragility of human life won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2024 for South Korean author Han Kang who is the first Korean and eighteenth woman to win the literature prize out of the 117 prizes awarded since 1901. Han wins the Nobel at a time when South Korean culture has started expanding globally. Many of Han’s protagonists are women but her prose works are often narrated from the perspective of men. The principal characters in Han’s novels are typically mentally unstable, so much that they suffer from dreams that continue to affect them in daylight. She deals with the intensity and darkness in many of her books and herself says about it thus “I always feel I am questioning when I write novels, and I wanted to deal with my long-lasting question about human violence and the possibility or impossibility of refusing it. And I will be happy if the readers could share my questions.” Now, the readers of the entire globe will share her questions through her winning the most prestigious award.
Han Kang was born in 1970 in the southwestern city of Gwangju and her father, Han Seung-won, was a novelist. She later moved to Seoul with her family and graduated from Yonsei University, majoring in Korean language and literature. As her father was a well-regarded novelist, it gave her much inspiration to be roaming in the world of literature. She began her career in 1993 with a group of poems in a South Korean magazine, before making her prose debut in 1995 with a short story collection. She later began writing longer prose works, most notably “The Vegetarian,” one of her first books to be translated into English which won her Man Booker International Prize in 2016 which deals with bodily autonomy, agency and the struggle for survival in a conformist world. It is a heart-shattering story which leaves its readers with a rather strong feeling of unease. The story follows a woman in Seoul who decides to stop eating meat, leading to disturbing and beautiful explorations of mental health, belief and unpredictable nature of human desire. The title itself gives us hints about its theme and really so the plot is focused on a woman who turns vegetarian. However, this story is not about dieting or healthy eating, the novel is more about people’s cruelty and violence.
Her novel ‘Human Acts’ explores the historical trauma that happened in 1980 massacre in which hundreds of students and unarmed civilians were brutally killed by the South Korean military in the city of Gwangju means birthplace. This historical fiction novel is narrated in the first-person point of view, and the narrator uses a distraught tone and a petrified mood. The novel's central character is Dong-ho, while the adversary is the South Korean Military canon. Here themes include uprising, military brutality, mishandling of the dead, and life in prison. It also explores the themes related to several characters impacted by the event, touching on themes of trauma, grief, censorship, denial and the long-lasting effects of state violence on individuals and society.
‘Greek Lessons’ was her most recent English-language release which was published in 2011 and its translated version was published in 2012.There lies a preoccupation with the human anatomy and the play between persona and experience, where a conflict arises in the work of the sculptor between what the body reveals and what it conceals. It is the story of the unlikely bond between this pair and a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection—a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive. Much of Han’s work poses the question, voiced by a character in her 2019 novel “Europa,” whose protagonist is wracked by nightmares: “If you were able to live as you desire, what would you do with your life?” It is an imaginative three-part novel in which a woman who rejects the norms of her society faces intense pressure to conform. She is abused, ostracized, force-fed and hospitalized. It addresses the thread of violence that runs through a society’s conventions and the devastating toll on individuals.
The lovers of literature of this planet experience that the Nobel literature category has been dominated by white authors for the past few decades that raised questions also. Only seven people of color have won this prestigious prize between 2000 and 2023. That’s a significant change from the Nobel literature awards of the 1980s and early 1990s.Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson praised Han Kang’s “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters. He said her work “has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose. Olsson calls Han’s ‘Human Acts’ a work of “witness literature”. It is based on the real-life killing of pro-democracy protesters in Han’s home city of Gwangju in 1980. Nobel Literature committee member Anna-Karin Palm says Han writes “intense lyrical prose that is both tender and brutal, and sometimes slightly surrealistic as well”.
Special thanks and great felicitations dear winner from the people of Bangladesh!
Author: Former teacher of Cadet College
