The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature has been announced. According to the official Nobel Prize website, South Korean writer Han Kang has been awarded the prize. The Nobel Prize website states, “Her poetic prose confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life.”
Background information reveals that Han Kang was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father and two older brothers are also writers. After graduating from Yonsei University, Han Kang turned her focus to poetry and novel writing. In 1999, she won the Korean Novel Literature Prize for her short story Baby Buddha. Since then, she has published several works, including The Fruit of My Woman, Black Deer, The Vegetarian, and We Do Not Part, among others. In 2015, The Vegetarian was first translated into English, and the following year, Han Kang won the Booker Prize for the English edition of The Vegetarian, becoming the first Asian author to receive the Booker Prize to date.