Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday — the first writer from her country to receive the major award.Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that she was receiving the honor “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”Han’s best-known book, “The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English.In the surreal novel, a depressed housewife shocks her family when she stops eating meat; later, she starves herself, thinking that she can feed off sunlight.Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.”Han’s award was a surprise.

Before Thursday’s announcement, the bookmakers’ favorite for this year’s award was Can Xue, an avant-garde Chinese writer of category-defying novels.The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer, poet or playwright’s career.

Past recipients have included Toni Morrison, Harold Pinter and, in 2016, Bob Dylan.Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million.In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America.Since 2020, the academy has awarded the prize to one person of color — Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian writer whose novels dissect the legacy of colonialism — as well as two women: Louise Glück, the American poet, and Annie Ernaux, the French writer of autobiographical works.Last year’s recipient was Jon Fosse, a No...