South Korean writer Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, it was announced early this Thursday. for his intense poetic prose, which confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.

The 53-year-old novelist, poet and contemporary artist is the first Asian to win the highest award in world literature, which she will receive on December 10 in Stockholm.

The announcement was made by Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. There it was stated that Han Kang’s work She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and with her poetic and experimental style, she has become an innovator of contemporary prose..

Han Kang has been interested in art and music. He has composed 10 songs and recorded a compact disc that accompanies his book of essays Quietly Sung Songs. Experts commented that listening to his poems is equivalent to a Buddhist meditation session.

The tape The scar, based on his novel The Buddha child, It won the international award at the San Sebastián Film Festival in 2011.

Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction in 2016 for The vegetarian. That narrative and Greek lesson They are available in Spanish in Mexican bookstores, with the Random House label. In addition, they have been translated into our language Blanco y human acts by the small Spanish publishing house Ediciones Rata.

Contacted by phone by the Swedish Academy, Kang (Gwangju, 1970) said Thank you. Thank you so muchand she recognized herself as absolutely surprised by the award: It’s an honor. He said that someone had told him the news when I had just had dinner with my son, and in Korea it is eight at night. So, it’s a very peaceful night. I was very surprised.

A quiet celebration

The writer announced after knowing the award: “I’m going to have tea with my son and I’ll celebrate it quietly tonight” (I will have tea with my son and celebrate peacefully tonight.)

He then added: For me, since I was a child, all writers have been collective. They look for meanings in life. Sometimes they are already missed determined, and all their efforts have been my inspiration.

When asked what book she recommends to delve into her work, the narrator responded: “We Do Not Part.” I hope this can be a beginning. AND human acts It is directly related to him. Then Blanco, That is a very personal book for me, because it is quite autobiographical. ”

the novel human acts, Set in 1980 in Gwangju, it tells the story of a boy who searches for the body of a friend murdered in the violent repression of a student protest. That year, South Korea’s then-military government sent troops in a bloody response against pro-democracy protesters, leaving around 200 dead and hundreds injured.

The novelist grew up in Seoul, after her family moved there from her native Gwangju. He studied Korean literature at the University of Yensei, and debuted as a poet publishing in 1993 poems as Winter in Seoulin the Korean magazine Literature and Society.

As a novelist, the following year he won the Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Competition with Red anchor. In 1995 he published his first collection of stories, Yeosu. Years later he received the Manhae literary award for human acts (2014) and the Hwang Sun-Won Literary Prize (2015) for the novel While One Snowflake Melts.

Han Kang was selected as a fifth writer for the future library project with the text Dear son, my beloved, which will be kept in a forest near Oslo until its publication, scheduled in 2114. Its most recent novel, We Do Not Part,

delicate feather

The writer and translator Isabel Zapata, told The Day that in the books The vegetarian y Blanco, I find what the Nobel Prize for Literature highlighted: a great subtlety to address complicated issues.

The first, the editor also reviews, brings together three stories that deal with of female autonomy, because around the protagonist, her decision is opposed, especially by men, and they begin to demand that she eat meat with all that that means symbolically. It is a very feminist book, but in a very delicate way. That was what I loved, at a time when topics are treated very crudely..

Meanwhile, the text Blanco explore A little from poetry the duel of a woman whose sister died. It is a very subtle book in language, very delicate, fragmentary. He is following the footsteps of that dead sister and reflecting on a you before you; That is, if your brother dies and you are born almost immediately, it is a hole that remains and that you come to fill in a family that is duel.

Zapata noted that “one of the main characteristics for me to like a book is its universal condition; In other words, what happens to this woman in The vegetarian, In Seoul, it could happen anywhere, because in the end it is an oppressive environment, where she cannot decide her own diet and everything that that means symbolically about women’s will regarding their body.

In South Korea’s parliament, several government hearings ground to a halt as lawmakers cheered and applauded Han’s award. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol issued a statement congratulating the narrator on her award, calling it a Great achievement in the history of Korean literature and a special moment for the nation.

(With information from Ap)