It’s enough to simply read a little beyond your own cultural area to find plenty. For example with Han Kang’s books. The South Korean, who will be honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature this year, is one of the most respected Asian authors in the world. Although their circulation figures do not reach those of their Japanese colleague Haruki Murakami, who is considered the favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature year after year with an almost grotesque monotony, Han can claim to have become popular in the West with a narrative style that which is less determined by Western patterns than is the case with Murakami. The fact that the writer, born in 1970, began her literary career as a poet plays a significant role here – the peculiarities of languages become clearer in poetry than in prose.
Han Kang is a poetic prose writer, but also a political one, who reflects the historical experiences of Korea in the individual fates of her protagonists (women play the main roles): war, division, dictatorship. And because violence is a global experience, the new Nobel Prize winner’s literature resonates so broadly. Now even with the Nobel Prize jury.
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