The Nobel Prize is famous for its insatiable appetite for giving its literature award to European men (79 out of 121 so far), so the announcement today that this year’s prize has gone to the South Korean writer Han Kang is a surprise. And not just because she’s an Asian woman: at 53, Han (her surname comes first, in the traditional Korean form) is the youngest winner in almost 40 years. Her win might give some energy back to a prize that sometimes looks like a lifetime achievement award for the chaps.
But one Nobel tradition has remained intact: Han’s books are strong meat, and not for everyone. She is most definitely not a part of the trend for “healing fiction” from South Korea and