Hang Kang is a 53-year-old fiction writer and a former winner of the Man Booker International Prize for her 2007 novel The Vegetarian. At the Nobel Literature Prize ceremony, she was praised “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.
The Nobel Prize committee has awarded the literary award since 1901 and this marks the 18th time a woman has won the prize. Han Kang is the first South Korean winner of the prize, who was described by the Nobel Prize board as someone who has "devoted herself to music and art". She won 11m krona (£810,000) which is the amount awarded to each Nobel Prize winner this year.
The Nobel Literature Prize statement also added that her work crosses boundaries by exploring a broad span of genres - these include violence, grief and patriarchy. A turning point for her career came in 2016, when she won the International man Booker prize for The Vegetarian - a book which had been released nearly a decade before, but was first translated into English in 2015 by Deborah Smith. It depicts the violent consequences for a woman who refuses to submit to the norms of food intake. Han's other works include The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons.
