South Korean author Han Kang has won the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature. Han is the first South Korean winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and the first Asian woman to win the prize.
Han Kang was born in 1970 in Gwangju , South Korea. She made her literary debut as a poet by publishing five poems, including ‘Winter in Seou’. She began her career as a novelist the next year by winning the 1994 Seoul Shinmun Spring Literary Contest with Red Anchor.
Her publications include a short story collection, Fruits of My Woman (2000), Fire Salamander (2012); novels such as Black Deer (1998), Your Cold Hands (2002), The Vegetarian (2007), Breath Fighting (2010), and Greek Lessons (2011), Human Acts (2014), The White Book (2016), I Do Not Bid Farewell (2021).
She won the 25th Korean Novel Award with the novella, Baby Buddha in 1999, the 2000 Today’s Young Artist Award by Culture Ministry Korea, the 2005 YiSang Literary Award with Mongol Spot, and the 2010 Dongri Literary Award with The Wind is Blowing.
She was awarded Manhae literary prize for Human Acts (2014) and Hwang Sun-won literary award (2015) for the novella While One Snowflake Melts. Her recent novella Farewell won the Kim Yujung Literary Prize.(2018).
The Vegetarian, available in an English translation edition, won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. Atti umani (Human Acts), also available in an English translation edition, won the 2017 Malaparte Prize in Italy. She was awarded San Clemete Prize for The Vegetarian in Spain 2019). She was selected as the fifth writer for the Future Library project in Norway in 2019. ‘Dear Son, My Beloved’, will be held in the Deichman Library in Oslo until its scheduled publication in 2114.
I Do Not Bid Farewell was awarded Medicis prize in France in 2023, Émile Guimet prize in 2024.
The White Book, Europa and Greek Lessons are also available in English translation editions while her lates novel, We Do Not Part, will be published in February 2025.
