A Korean win: The Hindu Editorial on the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature
By awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to South Korean poet and novelist Han Kang this year, the Swedish Academy has done two things. It has looked eastwards, after going with European writers Jon Fosse and Annie Ernaux in the past two years; and it celebrates an “innovator in contemporary prose”. While announcing the name, the academy lauded the 53-year-old writer, the first Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. With the human condition as her muse, specifically the question why and how humanity encompasses unspeakable depravity as well as indisputable acts of dignity and kindness, Han Kang has experimented with form and style to tell her stories. Her best-known work availab...