Hallyu again? 1st Korean to get Nobel Prize in Literature, Han Kang took the world by storm with The Vegetarian

Han Kang has been publishing poems since 1993 and prose since 1995. She is the author of The Vegetarian (2007), 'Human Acts: A Novel' (2014) and 'The White Book' (2016), among other books. (Image source: X)

'The Vegetarian' by 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Han Kang is a skinny novel whose intensity and weight can leave you feeling a bit winded. It begins with the protagonist, Yeong-hye, throwing expensive meat out of the fridge one night, and continues to chart the unravelling of her mind and her life. Reading 'The Vegetarian', you are never quite sure if the protagonist is getting what she wants - at least in the moment - or if she is losing her mind in a way that makes her unsure of what she might have ever wanted or of the point of anything at all.

Beauty and violence often occur simultaneously in the book. In one scene, Yeong-hye, wearing nothing but body paint, tries to find fulfilment in sex. It's a disaster, and she implodes spectacularly. Deborah Smith's English translation of the 2007 book came out in 2015 and won the International Booker Prize in 2016. Perhaps more importantly, it established Han Kang as a writer to watch - not just in her country, South Korea, but as someone who could tackle the universal themes of patriarchy and violence with a heartbreaking poignancy.

Kang is only the ninth Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rabindranath Tagore (1913), Yasunari Kawabata (1968), Kenzaburō Ōe (1994), Gao Xingjian (2000), VS Naipaul (2001), Orhan Pamuk (2006), Mo Yan (2012) and Kazuo Ishiguro (2017). She is also the first South Korean to get the prize which has been presented every year since 1901 except between 1940 and 1943, during the second World War. Han Kang, who has been writing for over 30 years now, is also only the 18th woman to get the 11 million Swedish crown ($1.1 million) prize.

Announcing the award, the Nobel Prize Committee said in a statement on October 10 that Han Kang "has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose".

Nobel Laureates have opened up in the past about how they got the call from the Academy, to notify and congratulate them on winning the Nobel Prize in their field. When the Academy phoned Han Kang past 8pm Seoul-time to tell her that she had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, she said, "I am surprised... I grew up around books..."

Han Kang's next book, 'We Do Not Part', is expected to release next year.