Nobel Prize week continues! On Thursday, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to South Korean writer Han Kang for her work which exposes the fragility of human life.
As per the committee, Kang has been awarded “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
"In her oeuvre, 2024 literature laureate Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. She 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," said the Nobel Committee.
While awarding Kang with the prestigious prize, her short story- Europa was quoted. In the short story, "the male narrator, himself masked as a woman, is drawn to an enigmatic woman who has broken away from an impossible marriage."
"The narrative self remains silent when asked by his beloved: “If you were able to live as you desire, what would you do with your life?” There is no room here for either fulfillment or atonement."
Kang's novel - Human Acts - was also named. The novel dives deep into the Gwanju Democracy Movement in 1980.
The novel "employs as her political foundation a historical event that took place in the city of Gwangju, where she herself grew up and where hundreds of students and unarmed civilians were murdered during a massacre carried out by the South Korean military in 1980."
The book confronts the episode of brutality and explores the genre of "witness literature".
