Han Kang: Innovative South Korean author wins the 2024 Nobel prize for literature

It’s often the case that when poets write novels, they deliver arrestingly vivid and nimble prose. Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007) is a case in point, and it is no doubt the work that was most influential in the Swedish Academy’s decision to award her the Nobel prize in literature 2024. The committee stated that Kang was awarded the prestigious prize because her “poetic and experimental style” has made her “an innovator in contemporary prose”.

Han Kang is the first South Korean writer to be awarded the Nobel prize in literature...