Nobel prize in literature goes to South Korean author Han Kang

The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to South Korean novelist Han Kang for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.

Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee, announced the prize in Stockholm on Thursday (October 10).

Han, 53, is the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel literature prize.

Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson praised her “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters.

Her major international breakthrough came with the novel, The Vegetarian, written in three parts. Her other works include The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons.

The Nobel committee said her work is characterised by a “double exposure of pain, a correspondence between mental and physical torment with close connections to Eastern thinking”.

The 2023 prize went to Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Fosse, who was honoured for “his innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable”.

The literature prize has long been male-dominated, with just 17 women among its laureates. The last woman to win was Annie Ernaux of France, in 2022.

The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1m) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. Alongside the cash prize, the winners will be presented a medal on December 10.

(With inputs from Al Jazeera)