Han Kang, South Korean Author, Wins 2024 Nobel Literature For Her 'Intense Poetic Prose'

Nobel Prize 2024: South Korean Author Han Kang won Nobel Prize in Literature “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes fragility of human life.” Han Kang – awarded 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature – was born in 1970 in South Korean city of Gwangju before, at age of nine, moving with her family to Seoul. She comes from a literary background, her far being a reputed novelist. Alongside her writing, she has also devoted herself to art and music, which is reflected throughout her entire literary production. Han Kang’s work is characterised by this double exposure of pain, a correspondence between mental and physical torment with close connections to Eastern thinking.

In Han Kang’s short story 에우로파 (2012; ‘Europa’, 2019), male narrator, himself masked as a woman, is drawn to an enigmatic woman who has broken away from an impossible marriage. narrative self remains silent when asked by his beloved: “If you were able to live as you desire, what would you do with your life?” re is no room here for eir fulfillment or atonement.

Last year, Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Fosse received Nobel Prize in Literature for his plays and prose, which awarding body described as works that “give voice to unsayable.” Born in 1959 in Haugesund, Norway, Fosse is renowned for his dramas, but his writing also includes poetry, essays, children's books, and translations. Swedish Acemy member Anders Olsson remarked that Fosse's work “touches on deepest feelings, anxieties, insecurities, and questions of life and death.”

At 64, Fosse became fourth Norwegian to win Nobel Prize for literature and first since 1928. After announcement, he told Norwegian brocaster TV2, "re are no more big prizes to win. Everything will be downhill from now on."