Author Han Kang became the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. Her work is distinguished by how historical events and mental and physical suffering are correlated.
Han is well recognized for “The Vegetarian,” her 2016 Man Booker Prize-winning debut book to be translated into English.
“For her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” the Swedish Academy declared that she was awarded a Nobel Prize.
The prize was given to Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse last year; his plays have been performed more than any other modern dramatist in history.
The Academy has long faced criticism for selecting an excessive number of Western white male authors.
Since the terrible #MeToo incident in 2018, the Swedish Academy has undergone significant revisions, promising a more international and gender-equal literature prize.
Since the incident, it has honored three men—Austrian novelist Peter Handke, Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Fosse—as well as four women: Han, Annie Ernaux of France, US poet Louise Gluck, and Olga Tokarczuk of Poland.
The Nobel Prize comes with a diploma, a gold medal and a $1 million prize sum.
Han will receive the award from King Carl XVI Gustav in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist and prize creator Alfred Nobel.
