Han Kang, South Korea’s first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was slow to secure global acclaim, getting her first big international prize nine years after her best-known novel was published, once it had finally been translated into English.
The long wait for the translation of “The Vegetarian”, which won the 2016 Man Booker International prize, seemed to prove the observation of Han’s father, himself an award-winning novelist, that it was the kind of book that “goes straight into the drawer”.
Although the novel went on to be translated into dozens of languages, “The Vegetarian” had sold fewer than a million copies back home before Thursday’s announcement by the Swedish Academy, largely because of relatively low readership of literature among South Koreans and a languishing publishing industry.
Han’s compatriots were making up for lost time on Friday, mobbing bookstores for her novels, poetry and short stories.
For some, Thursday’s surprise announcement – Han had not been on any of the major lists of likely Nobel winners – fuelled hope that literature might get an injection of life in the land of K-pop and “Squid Game”. Despite a rich history, Korean literature is far less known abroad than Japanese or Chinese works.
“I grew up with Korean literature, which I feel very close to,” Han told an Academy official after the award was announced. “I hope this news is nice for Korean literature readers and my friends, writers.”
