Han Kang from South Korea has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. The creator has gained nationwide and worldwide approval for her novel The Vegetarian, which received the Booker Prize in 2016. “Empathy Kang's concern primarily for the weak lives of girls is straight away felt in her pages and enhanced by the metaphorical energy of her prose,” stated Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel committee, including: “She has a singular understanding of how the soul is related with the physique, how the dwelling bond with the lifeless. Primarily based on her poetic and experimental model, she has confirmed to be an innovator in trendy prose.”
Kang was born in 1970 in Gwangju, a metropolis within the southwest of South Korea. When she was ten, her household moved to Seoul, the place Han Kang studied Korean Literature at Yeonse College. In Greek, her works “The Vegetarian”, translated by Amalia Tziotis, Kastaniotis Publications 2020, and “Greek Lesson”, translated by her (each books from the Korean), Kastaniotis Publications 2022, are revealed. Han Gang has additionally revealed the quick story collections “The Fruits of My Spouse” (2000) and “The Fireplace Salamander” (2012), in addition to the novels “Black Deer” (1998), “Your Chilly Arms” (2002), “The Wind Blows, go” (2010), “Human Actions” (2014), “The White Guide” (2016) and “I Don't Neglect” (2021).
“The vegetarian” is a terrifying story of refusal to eat meat, the place the ethical and social misrecognition of girls, the bodily and psychological violence, which is exercised in opposition to her, in addition to the tyrannical assertion of feminine autonomy, dominate. The e book clearly seems in direction of the theme of the eco-novel, concurrently conversing with the world of absurdity and Kafkaesque transformations, in addition to with a local weather of hallucinatory pictures which will have a number of (not solely psychiatric) origins.
YongHye has determined for nearly transcendental causes (as a result of she had a dream) to cease consuming meat, which causes a storm of household reactions: from her father, mom and siblings to her husband. The husband is disgusted and repulsed by his spouse, who defies the norm of custom, undermining his male ego, and won’t hesitate to rape her in an effort to self-discipline her. The heroine's son-in-law additionally participates within the household's dance of utmost reactions, who enters her home along with his digital camera (he’s a visible and movie artist), ending up imposing his personal ego on the mattress. YongHe's incarceration results in a psychological hospital, the place a forced-feeding program is carried out. Absurdity invades when YongHe, below these insufferable pressures, needs and tries to remodel right into a plant.
Torture below the patriarchal rule, the place the protagonist will probably be fed into the machine of social conventions, a nightmarish play with Kafka's transformations, a story with incessant twists and breath-taking expression, poetic pictures of nature and cinematic writing. A social, cultural, gender, ecological, but in addition existential thriller.
In “Greek Lesson” the protagonists are a mute lady and an virtually blind man. They share their desolation and loneliness. At a given second he’s disadvantaged of his glasses (they break), with out which it’s not possible to show historic Greek to her (her solely refuge). Then the 2 will come nearer, in a redemptive cohabitation of assist and solidarity. Shattered reminiscences and multi-modal monologues compose the material of a story by way of which Han Kang demonstrates the brilliance of her method and the depth of her sensitivity.
Supply: RES-MPE
