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South Korean author Han Kang wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Oct 10, 2024, 7:48am EDT
Han Kang during an interview in May 2019 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Han Kang during an interview in 2019. Louisiana Channel/YouTube
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The News

South Korean author Han Kang, 53, won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, praised for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Kang — whose international breakthrough came with her 2007 novel The Vegetarian after it was published in English in 2015, winning the Man Booker International Prize the following year — is the first South Korean author to win the literary award.

Her work shows a “unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead,” and her style is experimental, metaphorical, and poetic, the Nobel committee noted.

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Kang’s oeuvre also includes The White Book, a 2016 work constructed as a collection of short notes, and Greek Lessons, published in English last year.

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