Nobel Prize for Literature to South Korean Han Kang, author of 'The Vegetarian'

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature goes to South Korean writer Han Kang "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and reveals the fragility of human life". Born in 1970 in Gwangju, she is the first Asian woman and the first South Korean writer to receive the award.

She made her debut as a poet in 1993, to publish two years later a collection of short stories and in 2007 the novel The Vegetarian (Adelphi), which gave her great international notoriety. It is the story of Yeong-hye, a dutiful wife and obedient daughter, who one day comes across a dark forest and in the middle a shack full of meat hanging dripping with blood and from that moment on refuses to eat, cook and serve meat.

A decision the family greeted at first with dismay and then with growing annoyance and anger. La vegetariana won the Man Booker International Prize. An erotic horror film directed by Lim Woo-Seong (2009) and a play of the same name, adapted by actress and director Daria Deflorian and writer Francesca Marciano, and directed by Deflorian herself, were also adapted from the work, also on stage, together with Paolo Musio, Monica Piseddu, and Gabriele Portoghese, which will be at the Romaeuropa Festival from 29 October to 3 November (in choreography with Fabbrica dell'Attore - Teatro Vascello) after its premiere from 25 to 27 October at the Teatro Arena del Sole in Bologna Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale.

"The interest in stories that tell extreme lives is reinforced by a style that is increasingly interwoven with metaphors," the jurors noted when recalling Greek Lesson, a book from 2011 and translated by Adelphi in 2023, which is a portrait of an extraordinary relationship between two vulnerable characters: a young woman who, following traumatic experiences, can no longer speak, and her ancient Greek teacher, who is himself losing his sight. "Out of their respective weaknesses comes a fragile love story that is - for Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson - a beautiful meditation on loss, confidence and the essence of language."

From 2014 is the novel Atti umani (Adelphi), which has as its backdrop the massacre of students and civilians by the army in his hometown in 1980. 'By giving voice to the victims of the story,' Olsson noted, 'Kang writes a novel of testimony, but his style, visionary and succinct, deviates from what is expected of such a genre, for instance by using a device that allows the souls of the dead to separate from their bodies and witness their own annihilation. At certain moments, for instance when describing the unidentifiable bodies that cannot be buried, the text recalls Sophocles' Antigone'.