Nobel Prize: A prize without meat

A pale, thin man in a black suit emerges from a door with gold ornaments and reads something from the sight. In Swedish. After a few seconds there is cheering. Camera clicks, flashes. The Korean name Han Kang has been dropped. There is general relief in Stockholm and elsewhere: this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is a best-selling author and internationally known! Han Kang is used to winning.

She was born in 1974 in Gwangju, a South Korean metropolis. Her father was already a novelist, and her brother was to become one too. Han Kang consequently studied Korean literature, albeit at a private Christian university in the capital Seoul, even though she was raised Buddhist. Thirty years ago she won a major literary competition for the first time. In 1995 her debut »Love in Yeosu«, a volume of stories, was published. Novels, prizes, poems, awards, essays and teaching assignments followed.

The Internet reveals that as a young student, Han Kang developed an obsession with a line of poetry by the modern poet Yi Sang, which translates to: “I believe people should be plants.” In 2007, she published the novel, which later became should become her breakthrough: “The Vegetarian”. It’s about a South Korean housewife who decides to stop eating meat. Those around her can’t cope with this, and yes, this renunciation drives her husband crazy. Extreme brutality, insanity, attempted suicide and rape occur. A literary device: the protagonist remains silent for long stretches of the novel; the story is told from the perspective of others. Korean audiences initially didn’t particularly like the book.

Jon Fosse, Nobel Prize winner 2023, also explores or wallows in the depths of the human (male?) soul in his novels and plays. Annie Ernaux, who was honored the year before, is an ethnographer on the trail of herself, her fate and her suffering, as an example of a woman in a class society and a social climber. Han Kang tells the two of them that she is not a representative of higher cheerfulness, but is neither suitable for the social science template like Ernaux nor is she a whispering Christian with an alcoholic background like Fosse.

Back to South Korea: “The Vegetarian” will be made into a film in 2009. The English translation, for which Han Kang is co-responsible, will be published in 2016: The novel honored with the Man Booker International Prize… which, as we know, was won this year by the East Berliner Jenny Erpenbeck. Then it starts, bestseller numbers, translation into 25 languages, the book will be published in Germany in 2016 by Aufbau-Verlag.

Kang’s fourth novel “Greek Lessons” was most recently published there; her work is translated into German by Ki-Hyang Lee. It’s all about the relationship between women and men and the omnipresence of violence. A mother loses her ability to speak after the death of her mother and the loss of custody of her son. And tries to heal himself with private lessons in ancient Greek, no one’s native language. Your lecturer is blind.

Han Kang is about abysses, the dark corners of the soul, severe melancholy, trauma. One can try to relate this to the modern South Korean high-performance society, in which quiet, silent deviation, not wanting to participate in the struggle for private happiness, causes a system to crumble. Han Kang is by no means unfamiliar with politics and history: her novel “Human Work” is about the massacre by the South Korean military during student protests in her hometown in 1980. The story is told from the perspective of a dead person. The author used numerous diaries and historical documents for research.

The Swedish Academy’s always brief justification for its choice of Han Kang is as follows: She is receiving the prize “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and reveals the fragility of human life.” So far, so abstract. At 53 years old, Han Kang is a relatively young winner. She is also only the 18th woman in over 100 years of Nobel Prize in Literature history to receive this award. A very good writer, definitely. A fortunate decision for the book trade, where novels with plots still sell best. Controversial: not really.

So there was no Palestinian author, no one from Israel, no Ukrainian, no Russian dissident this year. The Swedish Academy avoids conflict. An author who has already been discovered and appreciated by millions, who, well, can write very well, but who has not really renewed or questioned literature, narrative, is becoming even more famous. So be it. The hustle and bustle of decision-making in the backroom up north in Stockholm is, if one is honest, a pseudo-aristocratic spectacle in the service of a book industry that would be better off supporting many small, serious and courageous literary ventures rather than a few To drag temporary superstars into the spotlight.

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