Han Kang: Nobel Prize in Literature 2024: The Vegetarian and Other Works

 

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2024 is awarded to South Korean author Han Kang "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life." 

Review first posted October 6, 2017 

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (October 30, 2007) Hogarth

I think of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Yeong-Hye stops eating meat and soon imagines herself one with the plant world, needing only sunlight. But her body remains the same, a human body needing food, even if meat-free. (publisher)

I am not sure if this book is a psychological study of extreme delusion or a study of a woman reacting to the strictures of a patriarchal world and a society with strict laws, especially when it comes to women's status. It could be both.

The story is told from three points of view - that of Yeong-Hye; of her brother-in-law who becomes obsessed with her; and of her older sister, the supposedly responsible, sane sister in the family. It's a bit disturbing, this story, but with a lot to ponder.

Book beginning:

Before my wife turned vegetarian, I'd had always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way. To be frank, the first time I met her I wasn't even attracted to her. Middling height, bobbed hair neither long nor short; jaundiced, sickly-looking skin, somewhat prominent cheekbones; her timid, sallow cheekbones told me all I needed to know. As she came up to the table where I was waiting, I couldn't help but notice her shoes - the plainest black shoes imaginable. And that walk of hers - neither fast nor slow, striding nor mincing.  

 

Her other book, Human Acts, deals with an historic event - a violent student uprising against political oppression in South Korea and the bloody putdown and massacre that ensued.   

from English Literaturen

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 · 

“After you died I could not hold a funeral,

And so my life became a funeral.”

― Han Kang, Human Acts

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Another memorable author from South Korea is known for her novel, Please Look After Mom, which I reviewed May 16, 2011 

Please Look After Mom: a Novel by Kyung-Sook Shin tells us about the children of a Korean woman whose mother is missing after being separated from her husband on a visit to the big city in the crowded and unfamiliar subway. 

The mother is elderly and becoming disoriented and forgetful; her daughter has only recently realized that her mother cannot read or write. They don't know how to go about finding the mother, apart from posting newspaper notices, searching through the streets, and passing out leaflets with her picture.

During their search, the children find out more about their mother and each member of the family gradually comes to have a deeper understanding of her and the life of sacrifice she has lived.

Set in Korea, I find the novel both culturally revealing and haunting in its view of a family's dynamics and a mother's relationship with her children and husband. 

“Either a mother and daughter know each other very well or they are strangers.”
― Kyung-Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom 

Kyung-Sook Shin is the first South Korean and first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012, for 'Please Look After Mom'. 

What are you reading/watching this week? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves