Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

South Korean author Han Kang, best known for “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.

Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, announced the decision at a press conference in Stockholm and said he received the honor “for his intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and reveals human fragility”. Life.”

The Nobel Prize is the pre-eminent prize in literature, and winning it is a capstone in the career of a writer, poet or playwright. Past recipients have included Toni Morrison, Harold Pinter and, in 2016, Bob Dylan. In addition to a huge boost in prestige and sales, the new winner received 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million.

In recent years, the Academy has sought to increase the diversity of writers considered for literary prizes, after facing criticism that fewer winners were women or from outside Europe and North America.

Since 2020, the Academy has awarded the prize to a person of color — Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian writer whose novels dissect the legacy of colonialism — as well as two women: Louise Gluck, the American poet, and Anne Arnaux, the French author of autobiographical works.

Last year's recipient was John Foss, a Norwegian author and playwright whose novels, told in long sentences, often have religious undertones.

Han's reward was a surprise. Ahead of Thursday's announcement, at a press conference in Stockholm, the bookmakers' favorite for this year's award was Can Jue, an avant-garde Chinese author of category-crime novels. Other authors seen as potential candidates for this year's prize include Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami; Gerald Murnane, a prolific Australian writer; and Cesar Aira, a noted Argentine writer of surrealist fiction.