2024 Nobel Prize in Literature to South Korean Han Kang

The Swedish Academy has selected South Korean novelist Han Kang for the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. Han Kang is the first Asian woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She is the second South Korean to win the Nobel Prize after former President Kim Dae-Jung. President Kim Dae-Jung was conferred the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.

Han Kang will receive her 11 million Kroner prize at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on 10 December 2024, Alfred Nobel's death anniversary.

About the Nobel Prize winner Han Kang 

The 2016 International Booker Prize-winning novelist Han Kang was selected by the Swedish Academy “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life."

53-year-old Han Kang, who writes in Korean, published her first poems in a magazine in 1993 and her first short story collection in 1995.

Her novel ‘The Vegetarian' brought her international recognition and the  2016 International Booker Prize.

Her important works include Your Cold Hands, Greek Lessons, Human Acts, The White Book, etc.

Women Literature Prize winner 

Han Kang is the 18th Woman to be honoured with the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1. The first woman to win the Literature Prize was Selma Lagerlof of Sweden in 1909.
2. Grazia Deledda of Italy - 1926
3. Sigrid Undset of Denmark- 1928
4. Pearl Buck of the United States- 1938
5. Gabriela Mistral of Chile -1945
6. NellySachs of Germany -1966
7. Nadine Gordimer of  South Africa-1991
8. Toni Morison of United States- 1993
9. Wisława Szymborska of Poland- 1996
10. Elfriede Jelinek of Austria - 2004
11. Doris Lessing of Iran - 2007
12. Herta Müller of Romania - 2009
13. Alice Munro of Canada - 2013
14. Svetlana Alexievich of Ukraine -2015
15. Olga Tokarczuk of Poland - 2018
16. Louise Glück of United States -2020
17. Annie Ernaux of France -2022
18. Han Kang of South Korea - 2024

Nobel Prize in Literature 

The Nobel Foundation instituted the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1900, as per Alfred Nobel's will, and the first prize was given in 1901.

• The first person to be honoured with the prize was Sully Prudhomme of France in 1901.
• The 2023 prize was awarded to Jon Olav Fosse of Norway.
• Between 1901 to 2024, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 117 times to 121 persons.

Indian Nobel Prize Winner in Literature

• Rabindranath Tagore was the first Asian and Indian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913). He is the only Indian to receive the prize.

For details and history of the Nobel prize, read Nobel Foundation increases the amount for Nobel Prize from 2024

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