Poetry is frequently written in appealingly brilliant and quick prose when it’s written in a novel. The Vegetarian ( 2007 ) by Han Kang is a prime example of this work, and it is undoubtedly the one that had a major impact on the Swedish Academy’s choice to give her the Nobel Prize in literature in 2024. The commission praised Kang for winning the prestigious prize because of her “innovator in fashionable prose” and poetic and empirical style.
Han Kang is the first North Korean author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, joining the other 18 women to have received the award in its 121 victors over 117 years. She was born in 1970 in Gwangju, and she has received numerous other notable national and international awards, including the Prix Médicis Etranger in 2023 for her book Difficult Goodbyes. She was even awarded the International Booker Prize in 2016.
The Vegetarian is Kang’s best-read job. It was published in 2007 and translated into English for use in the UK and the US in 2016. The name was appropriate because it coincided with a rapid rise in people becoming vegetarians and vegans, especially in the UK.
The book considers the effects of becoming vegetarians when everyone around you consumes meat, even though it is not a vegetarian manifesto. It conveys protagonist Yeong-hye’s struggle to maintain bodily firm in response to her father’s disgust at her determination ( he sees it as rebellion ), her brother-in-law’s romantic fascination with it and her husband’s violent acts, force-feeding her meat.
The Vegetarian is described as an anti-capitalist and ecofeminist protest that provides an expanded perception into masculine power of the adult body.
The tale perception and voice changes in each section of the book, which are organized into three parts. In the history of her own system and the choices she makes about it, Yeong-hye is not a first-person speaker. This glaring absence of tone seems to have been appropriate for the Nobel Prize. The committee argued that the writer’s devotion to “invisible sets of rules” and” the weakness of human life” was a factor in her choice because of her “unique consciousness of the contacts between body and soul.”
Although they are less well known and have more mysterious themes, Han Kang’s writing and short stories are just as impressive and significant as her novels. Her poetry often explores places ( walking on the city street ), juxtaposed with objects ( streetlamps, candles, mirrors ) and the fragmented human body ( a hand reaching out, fingertips, frozen cheeks, tongues, eyelids ).
We Do Not Part, her most recent book, may be published in English in February of next year. At least in terms of subject matter, We Do Not Part is perhaps more mysterious and complicated than The Vegetarian. After Inseon is hospitalized following a wood-chopping accident, Kyungha visits her companion Inseon’s remote home to care for a puppy animal. Trapped by a storm, she uncovers characters from the 1948-49 Jeju slaughter, in which around 1, 000 people were killed.
Responses to Kang’s get
There has been extensive praise for this year’s win. The Washington Post recognizes the medal as a possible resource for other Asian authors. The Guardian, however, acknowledges Kang’s accolades and expands on the agency’s reasons for awarding the prize: her emotion, distinct consciousness, experimental style, and “metaphorically charged prose”.
The award for writing is often questionable. Online forums debunk the legitimacy of victors and make complaints about the choices ‘ politics. Some observers are offended if the artist is very mysterious, as was the case with Norway Jon Fosse, who won in 2023. They are extremely offended if the prize is given to a figure who is too conventional, as it was the case with Bob Dylan in 2016.
The efficiency of Kang’s language and the nearby sensitivity of her writing, which brings Asian history and places to a worldwide audience, make her job innovative and compelling both in both form and content. A worthy success.
At Nottingham Trent University, affiliate teacher of colonial and world literature Jenni Ramone.
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