Nobel Prize in Literature 2024: The Swedish Academy announced the Nobel Prize in Literature for this year on Thursday. The prestigious award was given to South Korean author Han Kang. She received the prize for what the Nobel committee described as “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” Notably, this is the 117th time the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded. Last year, the prize was awarded to Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose that give voice to the unsayable.”
From the moment it was first established in 1901 up till 2023, a combined total of 120 remarkable individuals had the honour of receiving this esteemed award. Unique to this domain, nobody has ever managed to bag the award more than once. Also, it’s worth noting that the award was shared between two individuals only four times in its history – in the years 1904, 1917, 1966, and 1974.
Chairman of the Nobel committee, Anders Olsson, hailed Han kang’s “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters.
As per Olsson, Han’s work, “confronts historical traumas 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 a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”
Han has the honour of being the first author from South Korea to be awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature. The only other South Korean Nobel laureate is the late Kim Dae-jung, a former president lauded for his role in fortifying democracy in South Korea during its military dictatorship era. In 2000, he bagged the Nobel Peace Prize for his endeavours to foster improved relations with North Korea, despite its persistent division wrought by war.
The 53-year-old author was honored with the prestigious International Booker Prize in 2016 for her captivating piece, “The Vegetarian.” This thought-provoking novel unfolds the unsettling journey of a woman’s resolve to forego meat, and the serious aftermath that ensues.
Han said writing novels for people “is a way of questioning for me.”
“I just try to complete my questions through the process of my writing and I try to stay in the questions, sometimes painful, sometimes – well – sometimes demanding,” ABC News quoted Han as saying.
Alfred Nobel’s last will initiated the Nobel Prize, annually bestowed since 1901 to celebrate exceptional contributions in various domains such as Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace and, the newest addition, Economic Sciences. This year’s winners in the Nobel bracket for physiology, medicine, physics, and chemistry have been announced.
From the moment it was first established in 1901 up till 2023, a combined total of 120 remarkable individuals had the honour of receiving this esteemed award. Unique to this domain, nobody has ever managed to bag the award more than once. Also, it’s worth noting that the award was shared between two individuals only four times in its history – in the years 1904, 1917, 1966, and 1974.
Chairman of the Nobel committee, Anders Olsson, hailed Han kang’s “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters.
As per Olsson, Han’s work, “confronts historical traumas 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 a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”
Han has the honour of being the first author from South Korea to be awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature. The only other South Korean Nobel laureate is the late Kim Dae-jung, a former president lauded for his role in fortifying democracy in South Korea during its military dictatorship era. In 2000, he bagged the Nobel Peace Prize for his endeavours to foster improved relations with North Korea, despite its persistent division wrought by war.
The 53-year-old author was honored with the prestigious International Booker Prize in 2016 for her captivating piece, “The Vegetarian.” This thought-provoking novel unfolds the unsettling journey of a woman’s resolve to forego meat, and the serious aftermath that ensues.
Han said writing novels for people “is a way of questioning for me.”
“I just try to complete my questions through the process of my writing and I try to stay in the questions, sometimes painful, sometimes – well – sometimes demanding,” ABC News quoted Han as saying.
Alfred Nobel’s last will initiated the Nobel Prize, annually bestowed since 1901 to celebrate exceptional contributions in various domains such as Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace and, the newest addition, Economic Sciences. This year’s winners in the Nobel bracket for physiology, medicine, physics, and chemistry have been announced.