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

======================================

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  

Sunday Salon: Nobel Prize for Literature 2013

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! And visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer!

I just counted about nine books which I must read for book tours for the rest of the year. After that, I plan to quit book tours for a while and read books from my own TBR pile.  I notice I've been getting grouchy in my reviews lately, so it must be time to move on.

More nonfiction book are on my reading list, too.

By the way, who are you rooting for to win the Nobel Prize for Literature this year? My bet is on Murakami, whose novel 1Q84 with its magical realism and social commentary blew me away, even though it was almost 1,000 pages long. (Click on the link to see my thoughts on that book).

This from the Guardian: "Other favoured contenders include US author Joyce Carol Oates, Hungarian writer Peter Nádas, South Korean poet Ko Un  and Alice Munro, the short story writer from Canada."

I've heard Philip Roth's name bandied about too.

Who's your choice?

If you are having trouble leaving a comment, click on Book Dilettante and try again.

Nobel Prize Winning Authors: Pamuk and Kawabata

Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence was a new find. This is Pamuk's first novel after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006.

The translation from the Turkish by Maureen Freely is easy to read, flows smoothly, and I became engrossed in the first half of the book by a love story that became a story of obsession. I'm now bogged down, however, on page 340 of 532 pages.

Afer loving and leaving a distant poor relative, the beautiful Fusun,  and becoming engaged to a high society Turkish woman, the main character Kemal feels shame and guilt. But he also cannot control his need for Fusun and pursues her, scouring the streets of Istanbul to find her after she disappears.

I'm at this point hoping the novel will pick up after these few pages that has me tired of Kemal's obsession.  I want the novel to move along faster, but I think that Pamuk has a hidden agenda in this book - comments on Turkish society, the conflict between East and West, the old and the new.

In the meantime, I've picked up the book of another Nobel prize winner, The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata. Published in 1962, the novel was listed as one of three cited by the committee which awarded Kawabata the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968.

The novel is about Chieko, a young woman living in Kyoto, the old capital of Japan, who discovers at age 20 that she is adopted and was a foundling abandoned by her biological parents.

It's a slim book, only 162 pages long! I hope to finish both books though, and write longer reviews!