Han Kang wins Nobel Prize for Literature - Intensive Poetry About Humanity
Han Kang wins Nobel Prize for Literature - Intensive Poetry About Humanity
The Swedish Academy has the Nobel Prize for Literature 2024 to Han Kang , a South Korean author, awarded. Her work is recognized for the "intensive poetic prose, which deals with historical trauma and reveals the fragility of human life".
Han Kang's literary career
Han Kang, 53 years old, began her career with a collection of poems in a South Korean magazine before she gave her prose debut with a short story collection in 1995. Later she devoted herself longer prose works, especially with her most famous book "The Vegetarian", which is one of her first works that were translated into English. This novel, which won Booker International Prize in 2016, describes the attempt by a young woman to conduct a "plant -like" existence after experiencing macabre nightmares about human cruelty.
historical achievement for South Korea
HAN is the first South Korean author to win the Literature Prize, and only the 18th woman of a total of 117 award winners since 1901. The prize, which was announced in Sweden on Thursday, is endowed with 11 million Swedish crowns ($ 1 million). In a statement on Facebook, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol Hans Sieg described as a "great achievement in the history of Korean literature" and as a "national occasion". He added: "Han transformed the painful wounds of our modern history into great literature."
content -related depth and questions of identity
A central topic of Hans Werk is the question that a figure in her novel "Europe" from 2019 asks: "If you could live your life as you wish, what would you do?" Although many of Hans protagonists are women, their prose is often told from the perspective of men. This is how her novel "The Vegetarian" begins with the words: "Before my wife became a vegetarian, I thought she was completely inconspicuous in every respect."
translations and recognition
originally written in Korean, Deborah Smith was translated "The Vegetarian", who was 28 at the time and only became multilingual at the age of 21. Smith chose Korean due to a lack of English-Korean translators. The Swedish Academy praised Hans Werk for its "unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, between living and dead". Due to her "poetic and experimental style", Han "became an innovator of contemporary prose".
recommendations for readers
Anna-Karin Palm, a member of the Nobel Committee for Literature, recommended that readers who are not familiar with Hans Werk begin to start with the novel “Human Act”, which looks back on the 1980 Gwangju uprising, in which more than 100 civilians were killed during Pro-Democratic demonstrations in the South Korean city. "Human Acts" illustrates how "the living and the dead are always interwoven and how such trauma convert generations," said Palm when the award was announced. Hans "intensive, lyrical" spelling, she said, almost act like a consolation in the face of historical acts of violence.
reactions and sales figures
After the announcement, the demand for Hans Bücher in South Korea's bestseller lists. On Friday morning, her books took all top 10 places in the chart of the popular online retailer YES24 for Korean titles. The bookseller reported that the 70,000 copies of "Human Acts", "The Vegetarian" and "I do not say goodbye" were sold within just 14 hours after the announcement.
public appreciation of Han Kang
In the Kyobo Book Center bookstore in Seoul, customers cheered on Hans Winning. "I am very proud of her," said teacher Choi Ji-Hye, who was "shocked" by the news. For the engineering student Kim Jee-Heon, the announcement aroused a newly found interest in Hans Werk: "This is the first time that I hear from her, but I was really amazed to find out that a Korean writer won the award, so I am here to search for her books."
The selection process of the Nobel Committee
Before the announcement, Ellen Mattson, another member of the committee, explained how the jury selects the award winner every year. "We start with a very long list of about 220 names," she said. "Then we have to fight ourselves through this enormous amount of names - and we need the help of experts from different parts of the world." Finally, the committee reaches a collection of "about 20 names", which is then reduced to a shortlist by five authors before the final selection is made.preparations for the award ceremony
At the announcement of the award, Mats Malm, the constant secretary of the Swedish Academy, said that Han had "had a normal day" and "had just eaten with her son" when he called her to congratulate her. "She was really not prepared, but we started to discuss the preparations for December," he said. The Nobel Prize Awards will take place on December 10th in Stockholm, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.This article has been updated with reactions to the announcement.
The CNN reporters Gawon Bae, Charlie Miller and Oscar Holland contributed to this report.
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