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Ammon News - The 2024 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Han Kang, a South Korean author, for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Han, 53, began her career with a group of poems in a South Korean magazine, before making her prose debut in 1995 with a short story collection.

She later began writing longer prose works, most notably “The Vegetarian,” one of her first books to be translated into English. The novel, which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, charts a young woman’s attempt to live a more “plant-like” existence after suffering macabre nightmares about human cruelty.

Han is the first South Korean author to win the literature prize, and just the 18th woman out of the 117 prizes awarded since 1901. The prize, announced in Sweden on Thursday, carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million).

In a statement posted to Facebook on Thursday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol described Han’s win as “a great achievement in the history of Korean literature” and a “national occasion.” He added: “Han has turned the painful scars of our modern history into great literature.”

CNN