MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to the South Korean writer Han Kang. The Swedish academy noted how her poetic prose, quote, "confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life," unquote. Andrew Limbong is host of NPR's Book Of The Day podcast, and he's here to tell us more about her. Good morning, Andrew.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Hey, Michel.
MARTIN: So tell us more about Han Kang.
LIMBONG: All right. So she's a South Korean writer. She's been working since the '90s. She's written novels, short fiction, poetry - you know, all of it - and has had her work translated all across the globe. She's been awarded a number of literary awards in South Korea and got big international acclaim when she won the Booker International Prize in 2016. But if we're talking, like, stylistically, aesthetically, about her work, I think it's fair to describe her writing as kind of spare. You know, It does a lot with a little, but she takes on big subject matter. In the bio that the Nobel Committee published this morning, they note that a lot of her work is focused on pain. Whether we're talking physical pain or emotional, inherited pain, it's a subject matter that takes up a lot of her work.
MARTIN: I'm glad you mentioned that we can read her books in translation. So tell us...
LIMBONG: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...What would you recommend? Like, what can we, if we're not familiar with her work...
LIMBONG: If you're going to the library right now?
MARTIN: Yeah.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
MARTIN: What can we check out?
LIMBONG: I'd go - I would probably think the one to read is "The Vegetarian." It's the one she won the Booker International Prize for. On its face, it's about a woman who decides to stop eating meat after a troubling dream, which, you know, simple enough. But the main character takes it further, starting to believe that she herself is turning into a plant. And then it also kind of becomes, like, a psychosexual domestic thriller. The reviews from when the English translation came out all sort of coalesce around this point of how the book is both serene and beautiful in its language, but also kind of brutal in its depiction of suffering. Now, if that sounds like a lot to you, it's kind of supposed to be. Here she is talking to NPR in 2016 about the book.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
HAN KANG: I always feel I am questioning when I write novels. And I wanted to deal with my long-lasting question about human violence and the possibility or impossibility of refusing it.
MARTIN: So Andrew, before we let you go - how big of a deal is this win?
LIMBONG: Yeah, the Nobel Lit Prize is often criticized for being too Western and too male, right? And she's the first woman from Asia to win the prize, so there's that. Also, when she won the Booker International Prize, that was, like, a big win for South Korea - you know, for its presence on the worldwide literary stage. So I think anyone who was hyped about that is equally, if not more, stoked about this win.
MARTIN: That was NPR's Andrew Limbong. Andrew, thank you.
LIMBONG: Thanks, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
