award
Han Kang receives Nobel Prize in Literature 2024
© Getty Images
The decision on the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature has been made. The Swedish Academy honors a South Korean woman.
The South Korean writer Han Kang will be with the this year Nobel Prize in Literature awarded. This was announced by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. She will receive the most prestigious literary prize on earth for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and exposes the fragility of human life,” as the academy’s permanent secretary, Mats Malm, said at the award announcement in Stockholm’s Old Town. Han Kang is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature – and the first woman among the Nobel Prize winners announced so far this year.
Last year the Nobel Prize in Literature went to the Norwegian Jon Fosse. He was honored for his innovative plays and his prose, which “gives a voice to the unspeakable,” as the academy put it at the time. The year before, the Frenchwoman Annie Ernaux, another big name in world literature, was declared a Nobel Prize winner.
Nobel Prize in Literature for Han Kang
Since the prize was first awarded in 1901, a total of 121 Nobel Prize winners for literature have been named. These included world-famous writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Selma Lagerlöf and Jean-Paul Sartre, but also personalities such as the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the US musician Bob Dylan, who are not necessarily associated with world literature. The last German winners were Herta Müller 15 and Günter Grass 25 years ago, the last German-speaking Austrian Peter Handke five years ago.
Audiobook tips
Five books by German-speaking Nobel Prize winners for literature that you need to know
This week, this year’s winners in the scientific categories of medicine, physics and chemistry were announced. There were seven men among them – and no women.
Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo
After the announcement in the literature, the Nobel Prize event now temporarily moves from Stockholm to Oslo: While the first four prize announcements traditionally take place in the Swedish capital, the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s election always follows on Friday in Norway. Finally, next Monday it will be announced who will receive the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, sponsored by the Swedish central bank, again in Stockholm.
The prestigious Nobel medals are all ceremoniously presented on December 10th, the anniversary of the death of the prize founder and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). This year, the awards are once again endowed with prize money of eleven million Swedish crowns (just under 970,000 euros) per category.
Note: This article has been updated.