dpa
Stockholm
South Korean author Han Kang is the 2024 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday.
She received the world’s most prestigious literary award for her "intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” Permanent Secretary of the Nobel Academy Mats Malm said during the award announcement in Stockholm’s Old Town.
Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature - and the first woman among the Nobel laureates announced this year.
She is the first Korean to win the literature prize. The 53-year-old was born in Gwangju, South Korea, and lives in Seoul.
She won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for her novel "The Vegetarian,” about a woman who decides to stop eating meat and the personal ramifications this has on her life.
The Nobel Prize in Literature is worth 11 million Swedish krona ($1.06 million).
German literary critic Denis Scheck considers the selection of Han for the prize to be an excellent choice.
"The academy has shown a felicitous touch,” Scheck told dpa shortly after the announcement.
Han, he said, is a truly Nobel-worthy author who has written wonderful stories. Scheck said the selection of the author was a surprise - "but a pleasant one.”
Last year’s winner of one of literature’s highest honours was Norwegian novelist and playwright Jon Fosse.
In 2022, the French author Annie Ernaux won for her body of largely autobiographical work.
Since the first award in 1901, a total of 121 Nobel laureates in literature have been named.