South Korean author Han Kang receives the Nobel Prize for Literature

Books by South Korean writer Han Kang were on display at the Swedish Academy after it was announced that she was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, on Thursday. Photo by Jessica Gow/EPA-EFE

Kang, the daughter of a writer, had her international breakthrough in 2007 with her novel The vegetarianwritten in three parts.

“The book depicts the violent consequences that result from its protagonist Yeong-hye's refusal to submit to the norms of food intake,” the Nobel Committee said in a statement. “Their decision not to eat meat is met with different, completely different reactions. Her behavior is violently rejected by both her husband and her authoritarian father, and she is erotically and aesthetically exploited by her brother-in-law, a video artist obsessed with her passive body.

The vegetarian was made into a film in 2009 like her other novel Scars in 2011, both directed by Lim-Woo Seong.

Kang also devoted much of her time to art and music, as well as writing. The Nobel Prize Committee said these efforts are reflected in her literary work. Her career as a writer began with the publication of the poetry collection in a South Korean magazine in 1993.

In 1995 she published her first collection of short stories Love for Yoeosufollowed by her first novel.

Her 2002 novel Your cold handsexplores her interest in art by reproducing a manuscript left by a missing sculptor who was obsessed with making plaster casts of the female body.

“She has a unique awareness of the connection between body and soul, the living and the dead, and has become an innovator of contemporary prose with her poetic and experimental style,” Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee, said in a statement.