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Han Kang, the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature

In a surprising decision given her youth, South Korean writer Han Kang has been awarded one of the most prestigious honors in the literary world.

Han Kang, the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature
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Han Kang, born in 1970 and hailing from Gwangju, South Korea, has been named this year’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, the Nobel committee announced in the early hours of October 10. Kang, the daughter of renowned South Korean novelist Han Seung-won, has also distinguished herself in the fields of art and music, according to the Nobel Committee.

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The committee highlighted that Kang was recognized for “her intense poetic prose, which confronts historical traumas and reveals the fragility of human life.”

A rising star in world literature, Kang published her first work, a series of poems, in 1993 in the South Korean journal Literature and Society. Her debut short story collection, Love of Yeosu, followed two years later.

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The Vegetarian and global fame

Experts noted that Kang’s leap onto the international stage was propelled by her novel The Vegetarian, a three-part narrative following a protagonist who challenges conventional attitudes toward food.

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“Her behavior is rejected by her husband and authoritarian father, while she is erotically and aesthetically exploited by her brother-in-law, a video artist obsessed with her passive body,” Nobel representatives explained.
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Published in 2007, the novel’s success grew further with a film adaptation by Lim Seong-Woo, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009.

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“She possesses a unique focus on the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and her poetic, experimental style has brought a new dimension to contemporary prose,” the committee concluded.

What books Has Han Kang written?

To date, Kang has published 11 books, including four short story collections: Love of Yeosu, My Wife’s Fruit, Box of Tears, and The Yellow Design of Eternity, as well as seven novels: The Black Deer, Your Cold Hands, The Vegetarian, Breath Fight, The Greek Hour, The Boy is Coming, and Human Acts. Her latest, Human Acts, explores a traumatic event that shaped her hometown of Gwangju, where unarmed students and civilians were massacred by the South Korean military in 1980.

Nota publicada originalmente en El Heraldo de México

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