The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to 53-year-old South Korean writer Han Kang for her “intense poetic prose that grapples with historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life.” Her works include The Vegetarian, The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons.

“I was able to speak to Han Kang on the phone,” said Swedish Academy permanent secretary Mats Malm after the winner was announced. “She seemed to be having a normal day – she had just had dinner with her son. She wasn’t really prepared for this, but we started talking about preparations for December – when Han will be awarded the Nobel Prize.

Han’s novels, novellas, essays and short story collections deal in various ways with themes such as patriarchy, violence, grief and humanity. Her 2007 novel The Vegetarian, translated into English by Deborah Smith in 2015, won the 2016 International Booker Prize.

Han is the first South Korean author and 18th woman to win the prize. Her “empathy for vulnerable, often female lives is palpable and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose,” said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee. She “has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, living and dead, and has become an innovator in contemporary prose in a poetic and experimental style.”

Han was born in 1970 in Gwangju, a city in southwest South Korea. When she was ten years old, her family moved to the Suyu-dong district of Seoul. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University in the capital.

In 1993, Han made her literary debut with a series of five poems published in the Korean magazine Literature and Society. The following year, she won the Seoul Shinmun Spring Literature Competition with the story Red Anchor.

Her first short story collection, Love of Yeosu, was published in 1995. In 1998, she participated in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program for three months, supported by the Arts Council Korea.

“The Vegetarian” was her first novel to be translated into English. Although the translation was criticized, it helped gain Han worldwide readership.

Han’s latest novel, We Do Not Part, will be published in English in 2025, translated by E Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. The story is about a writer who discovers the impact of the 1948-49 Jeju Uprising on her friend’s family.