2024 Nobel Prize for Literature goes to South Korean Han Kang

The South Korean writer Han Kang has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. This has just been announced by the Swedish Academy. She has been awarded the prize for her intense poetic prose, which deals with historical trauma and reveals the fragility of human life in each of her works. Han Kang is the 18th woman to receive the prize.

"She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and has become an innovator in contemporary prose with her poetic and experimental style," writes the Academy.

Han Kang became known in Germany through her 2007 novel "The Vegetarian", which was published in German in 2016. A "book about a woman who, according to her husband, can hardly be surpassed in mediocrity – until one day she decides to stop eating meat", as her German publisher puts it. Her only explanation to her husband for removing all animal products from the household is: "I had a dream." Han Kang received the Man Booker International Prize for "The Vegetarian" in 2016. Since then, her books have also enjoyed international success.

120 prizes awarded

According to the Academy, there were around 200 names on the extended list of candidates this year –, which has traditionally been kept secret for 50 years.

Since the first prize was awarded in 1901, 121 Nobel Prizes for Literature have been awarded, including to world-famous writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Selma Lagerlöf and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as to personalities such as former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US musician Bob Dylan, who are not necessarily associated with world literature at first. The last German winners to date were Herta Müller 15 years ago and Günter Grass 25 years ago, while the last German-speaking winner was the Austrian Peter Handke five years ago.

In the past two years, the Nobel Prize for Literature went to the Norwegian Jon Fosse and the French Annie Ernaux. Both had been among the shortlist of favorites at the time. This time, in addition to a number of other promising candidates, – the Chinese Can Xue, the British-American author Salman Rushdie from India and the Australian Gerald Murnane, among others, were given a good chance.

Nobel Prizes for ML and AI

Earlier this week, the winners in the scientific categories of medicine, physics and chemistry were announced. Machine learning and artificial intelligence played a significant role in this. So far, the prizes have been awarded to seven men, with no women among them.

On Friday, the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced in Oslo rather than Stockholm, as is the case with the other Nobel Prizes. Next Monday, the economics category will conclude the annual Nobel Prize announcements.

The Nobel Medals are traditionally presented on December 10, the anniversary of the death of prize donor and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). This year's awards are once again endowed with prize money of 11 million Swedish kronor (just under 970,000 euros).

(anw)