Han Kang awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2024 has been awarded to South Korean author Han Kang ‘for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.’

Known for her experimental style and thought-provoking storytelling, Han Kang's books have received wide acclaim, with her most recent book Greek Lessons (2023) and upcoming We Do Not Part (2025) published by Penguin Random House Australia. Kang joins the ranks of more than eighty Penguin Random House authors to have been awarded the prestigious prize, but is no stranger to literary accolades.

The Vegetarian, first published in English in 2015, won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, and Han Kang herself has been awarded the Yi Sang Literary Award, the Today’s Young Artist Award, the prix Médicis étranger and the Manhae Prize for Literature.

Born in the South Korean city of Gwangju before moving to Seoul as a child, Han Kang is the first South Korean writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. ‘What a wonderful moment this is for Han Kang and for all who love her work,’ says Simon Prosser, Publishing Director at Hamish Hamilton in the U.K. ‘In writing of exceptional beauty and clarity she faces unflinchingly the painful question of what it means to be human – to be of a species which is simultaneously capable of acts of cruelty and acts of love. She sees and thinks and feels like no other writer. Her books are both a wonder and a gift, and I could not be happier for her as she is awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.’

Parisa Ebrahimi, Executive Editor at Hogarth, Han Kang’s North American publisher, says: ‘Han Kang is a visionary, there’s no other word for it. Her novels powerfully chronicle the question of what it means to be human – they give the world back its wonder, its mystery, its beauty, its pain. . . Her books change the way we think and feel about the world, a sentiment shared by so many readers who have encountered her work over the years. She is simply one of our greatest living writers.’

Her upcoming book

We Do Not Part by Han Kang
Coming 25 February 2025

Like a long winter's dream, this new novel by Han Kang takes us on a journey from contemporary South Korea into its painful history.

One morning in December, Kyungha receives a message from her friend Inseon saying she has been hospitalized in Seoul and asking that Kyungha join her urgently. The two women have last seen each other over a year before, on Jeju Island, where Inseon lives and where, two days before this reunion, she has injured herself chopping wood. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation, Inseon has had to leave behind her pet bird, which will quickly die unless it receives food. Bedridden, she begs Kyungha to take the first plane to Jeju to save the animal.

Unfortunately, a snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and snow squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save Inseon's bird – or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness which awaits her at her friend's house.

There, the long-buried story of Inseon's family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in the archive painstakingly assembled at the house, documenting a terrible massacre on the island of 30,000 civilians, murdered in 1948-9.

We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination, and above all a powerful indictment against forgetting. These beautiful pages form much more than a novel – they illuminate a traumatic memory, buried for decades, that still resonates today.