Han Kang

Han Kang is a South Korean writer, born on 27 November 1970 in Gwangju. She grew up in a family of writers and began publishing poetry and then fiction in her twenties. Her work is known for its spare, poetic prose and its close attention to the body, to pain and to the ways people live with violence and loss. Her novels often look at the aftermath of historical and private suffering, including the 1980 uprising in her home city. International attention grew when The Vegetarian won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, in Deborah Smith's English translation. In 2024 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first South Korean writer to receive it. Her books are read around the world for their quiet intensity and their moral seriousness.