What drives Nobel Prize winner Han Kang to write?

Alongside the laureates for the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine and Economic Sciences, South Korean author Han Kang is receiving her award at a ceremony held at the Stockholm Concert Hall in Sweden, on December 10 — the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.

She delivered her Nobel Prize lecture ahead of the ceremony, on December 7.

In a lecture titled "Light and Thread," she revisits the impulses that have guided her literary journey. Going back to a poem book she wrote at the age of 8, she sees a strong continuity between her early passion for words and her present work: "Where is love? It is inside my thump-thumping beating chest. What is love? It is the gold thread connecting between our hearts," her poem reads.

She then goes on to point out that throughout her work, which includes "The Vegetarian" or "Human Acts," she explores the question of why humans are so violent, and what it means "to belong to the species called human." 

"Why is the world so violent and painful? And yet how can the world be this beautiful?" are two questions at the core of her writing, she says.

It is Han Kang's powerful exploration of those questions that led the Swedish Academy to recognize her with the world's top award in literature, noting her "intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life."

From poems to prose

The 53-year-old Han Kang hails from a literary background, with her father already a well-regarded novelist. Han Kang began her career in 1993 with the publication of a number of poems in the South Korean magazine Literature and Society, while her prose debut came in 1995 with the short story collection "Love of Yeosu."

The author later began writing longer prose works and had her major international breakthrough with "The Vegetarian." First published in Korean in 2007, the novel was translated into English in 2015, winning the Man Booker International Prize a year later.

It tells the story of Yeong-hye, a homemaker who, one day, decides to stop eating meat after having a series of dreams with images of animal slaughter. Her decision not to eat meat is met with diverse reactions; it eventually distances her from her family and society, and ultimately sees her descending into a psychosis-like condition.

"Human Acts" (2014) tells the stories of the survivors and victims of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising in South Korea. Having grown up in Gwangju herself, Han Kang's book captured the event where hundreds of students and unarmed civilians were murdered during a massacre carried out by the South Korean military.

The Swedish Academy stated: "In seeking to give voice to the victims of history, the book confronts this episode with brutal actualization and, in so doing, approaches the genre of witness literature." Some critics have described it as Han's best novel. It won Korea's Manhae Prize for Literature in 2014 and Italy's Malaparte Prize in 2017. 

In "The White Book" (2016) the story's unnamed narrator moves to a European city where she is haunted by the story of her older sister, who died a mere two hours after birth. This book about mourning, rebirth and the tenacity of the human spirit was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2018.

In their citation, the Swedish Academy lauded Han's work for her "unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead." Through her "poetic and experimental style," the academy said, Han "has become an innovator in contemporary prose."

Asian representation

Han Kang is not only the first South Korean to win the award, but also the first Asian woman to do so. 

With her win, she joins eight Asian men who have won the prize. Poet, philosopher, composer and visionary Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913. 

Founded in 1786 by Swedish King Gustav III, the Swedish Academy is the body that is responsible for selecting the Nobel laureates in literature. Composed of 18 members — known as " De Aderton" (or The Eighteen) — with life tenure, current members include distinguished Swedish writers, linguists, literary scholars, historians and a prominent jurist.

The academy has long been criticized for the overrepresentation of European and North American and predominantly white, male authors among its laureates, and was rocked by a #MeToo scandal in 2018. Of 120 laureates, only 18 have been women, with eight of them being awarded the prize in the past 20 years.

Han Kang follows Norwegian author Jon Fosse, a playwright known for his avant-garde style. French author Annie Ernaux, who the academy praised for her "courage and critical acuity," was the 2022 winner; in 2021, the academy honored British Tanzanian-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose work explores exile, colonialism and racism. 

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier

Update: This article, first written on October 10 when the 2024 laureate was announced, was updated on December 10 for the Nobel Prize award ceremony.