South Korean Author Han Kang Wins Nobel Prize

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/10/south-koreas-han-kang-wins-2024-nobel-prize-in-literature

by ricardoplouis • 2 years ago

70 56 2 years ago

bnchrch• 2 years ago

Figure I'd pull an arbitrary quote from Han Kang for this. Translated obviously

“There is none of us whom life regards with any partiality. Sleet falls as she walks these streets, holding this knowledge inside her. Sleet that leaves cheeks and eyebrows heavy with moisture. Everything passes.” - Han Kang

Horffupolde• 2 years ago

Korean existentialism reinvented?

hshshshshsh• 2 years ago

Everything passes but also remains unchanged.

asdasdsddd• 2 years ago

its very sad that asian prose translates so terribly into english

curiousllama• 2 years ago

Even knowing no asian languages, I can just feel something missing, especially in the first sentence there

qart• 2 years ago

I don't think that has anything to do with the continent. People like Haruki Murakami and Liu Cixin have achieved immense reader-bases with their English translations.

yongjik• 2 years ago

And vice versa. So many English works translated to Korean read like chewing sand.

It doesn't help that books don't sell well in Korea and translators are poorly paid. Often you can literally see "Oh the original English word must be X, because it doesn't make sense and the translator just used the more popular meaning of the word!"

MisterBastahrd3• 2 years ago

Is there a better, and actually insightful quote from her that we should know about? Because this is the sort of writing you'd expect from an emo 6th grader, not a Nobel prize winner. "Life isn't fair, nothing lasts forever" isn't exactly genius level stuff.

Jtsummers2• 2 years ago

> "There is none of us whom life regards with any partiality."

That means the opposite of "Life isn't fair". Partiality - unfair bias in favor of one thing or person compared with another; favoritism.

She's written, in that quote, that life is fair.

summerlight• 2 years ago

I don't think she is best known for a beautiful, insightful writing styles. To understand this case better, you probably want to understand the modern history of S. Korea, especially the connection between her book "Human acts" and the Gwangju massacre.

EDIT: Actually Nobel Committee's bibliography does a good job on her works.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2024/bio-biblio...

bobosha• 2 years ago

am i the only relieved that for once a non-AI human has won the nobel?

diggan• 2 years ago

I must have missed something big, when did a AI human win the Nobel prize?

dhairya• 2 years ago

It's in reference to the Physics prize going to Hinton and Hopfield for "for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks." and the Chemistry prize to Google DeepMind's founder Demis Hassabis, alongside with John Jumper (Google Deepmind) and David Baker for Alpha fold. Both prizes were given to significant figures in the AI space or use of AI applications.

thenobsta• 2 years ago

I was pretty relieved to see that chatGPT didn't win literature prize. It needs to refine it's imagery and self expression a little more.

shmel• 2 years ago

I am fairly certain that as an AI language model, it can't win any prize =)

logical422• 2 years ago

Well I guess I'm never going to be google-able again.

logical422• 2 years ago

I am tempted to write a book called "The carnivore" though.

carabiner2• 2 years ago

I think the Nobels, especially in the arts, have lost their relevance, similar to the Michelin restaurant awards and the Oscars for film. We now know they're from a select group (of Norwegians in this case) with certain tastes no more noteworthy or transcendent than any of ours. The world has too much culture and achievement today to be marked by one group of awards like this per year. We have "Oscar bait," but I think the phenomenon of "Nobel bait" has been around for a long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait

locuscoeruleus• 2 years ago

We now know they're from a select group (of Norwegians in this case) with certain tastes no more noteworthy or transcendent than any of ours.

Only the nobel peace prize is handed out by Norway. What would you consider an example of nobel bait?

mongol• 2 years ago

Obama getting the peace prize after less than a year as president. He had not done anything extraordinary related to peacse and he seemed mostly embarassed to receive it given that

carabiner2• 2 years ago

Ok, the physics prize is given by swedes. The overall point stands though; there's a massive nationalist bias to the Nobels that is well known: https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Sweden-have-so-many-Nobel-lau...

I used to think that Nobel committee was made up of researchers around the world, and the Nobel dudes would just present it for a ceremony. Nope, it's really just people from one college who are picking these prizes.

ericmcer• 2 years ago

Bob Dylan?

parodysbird2• 2 years ago

I enjoy Oscar bait films and Michelin star restaurants. Oscar bait film season (winter) is the main season I look forward to going to to the movies, not summer (blockbuster season). But it's not some attack on mainstream culture just because there are awards for niche/elite/artsy/etc culture. Similarly, just because the Nobel for literature goes to a niche literary author you don't know/like doesn't demean whatever your reading preferences are.

esjeon• 2 years ago

Similarly, just because the Nobel for literature goes to a niche literary author you don't know/like doesn't demean whatever your reading preferences are.

You know how things work. The media starts to chant about how great those winners are, with only a few seriously digging into the actual works. They are quickly followed by internet trolls who derail every discussion by insisting that these are masterpieces certified by big-name committees, claiming that we, the lowly masses, must accept the decisions of the great authority as the absolute truth of our lives.

Every awards season is like this, and I now hate awards

nottorp• 2 years ago

They tend to be awarded only to works treating depressing subjects. Or to authors in depressing situations.

When was the last time an Oscar or a literature prize (Nobel but not only) has been awarded to something funny?

cafard• 2 years ago

The lists are curious--did you think of Bergson or Russell as men of letters?--and I think that only scholars will have read more than a couple of the laureates from any given decade. I was interested to see that Mommsen received it.

[Edit: changed "know" to "will have read"]

JumpCrisscross2• 2 years ago

similar to the Michelin restaurant awards

Michelin stars remain coveted and are a sure-fire way for fine-dining restaurants to fill their seats.

pie4202• 2 years ago

name a more prestigious/better guide (marketing tool) for restaurants?

akaike• 2 years ago

That’s so awesome! My girlfriend read all her books and told me how beautifully she writes in Korean.

Definitely well-deserved!

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

Official release: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2024/press-rele...

simplegeek2• 2 years ago

Is good English translation of her works available? If so, please share. I like good prose and want to read and understand how is her prose different. Thanks.

limitedfrom2• 2 years ago

Deborah Smith translated her biggest works (The Vegetarian & Human Acts). In fact, her translation arguably single-handedly led to Han Kang winning the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, which then made her popular outside Korea. The translations have been quite popular, but a bit controversial as well[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Smith_(translator)

lifthrasiir2• 2 years ago

It's not like that Han Kang doesn't speak English and Smith butchered her works in secrecy. Han Kang has even explicitly supported the English translation so the "controversy" should be considered ungrounded.

simplegeek2• 2 years ago

Thank you!

South Korean Author Han Kang Wins Nobel Prize

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