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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lucy Knight, Ella Creamer and Philip Oltermann

South Korea’s Han Kang wins 2024 Nobel prize in literature – as it happened

Jon Fosse Nobel Prize Annie Ernaux Olga Tokarczuk
Han Kang
Han Kang Photograph: Alamy

And that’s it for another year! Thank you for joining us for the live blog. You can read the full story by Ella Creamer here.

The Nobel peace prize will be announced tomorrow at 10am BST (11:00 CEST).

There is one book by Han Kang that even the Swedish academy won’t have been able to read yet: in 2019 Han became the fifth writer to have been chosen for Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library art project. Paterson asks one writer a year to contribute a manuscript on the themes of imagination and time, which are then stored in a specially designed room in a forest in Oslo. In 2114, 100 years after the project’s launch, its curators will cut down the 1,000 Norwegian spruces that were planted in 2014, and print the texts – unseen by anyone until then – for the first time.

It’s exciting that Han’s win will bring even more readers to South Korean literature. Could K-lit be the new K-pop?!

Which books shape a Nobel laureate? Read about the books that have been important to Han Kang here:

“Thank goodness Han Kang’s literary voice takes up space in the world in the way her female characters struggle to,” wrote Em Strang in her review of Han’s most recent novel to have been translated into English, Greek Lessons. Read the full review here:

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Who is Han Kang?

Han, the daughter of novelist Han Seung-won, is the first writer from South Korea to be awarded the Nobel prize in literature. Her debut book, the short story collection A Love of Yeosu, was published in 1995, followed by a number of novels and novellas. In 2007 she published The Vegetarian, the English translation of which won her the Man Booker International prize for fiction in 2016. The allegorical novel tells the story of a woman’s decision to stop eating meat and its devastating consequences. The author has won a clutch of awards for her work, including the Yi Sang literary prize, Today’s Young Artist award, and the Korean Literature Novel award. The Korean edition of her most recent novel, We Do Not Part, has been well received, and will be available in English translation by e yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris in February.

Updated

In conversations about who might win the Nobel this year, the general consensus was that Han Kang was too young – she is 53. However, Han is not the youngest author to be awarded the Nobel: Rudyard Kipling is the youngest person to win the Nobel prize in literature, receiving the award in 1907 at the age of 41.

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Olsson says Han’s work has “a broad span in terms of genre”, and praises her “metaphorically charged prose”.

“In her oeuvre, 2024 literature laureate Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life,” he adds. “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”

Updated

Read Claire Armitstead’s 2016 interview with Han Kang, in which she talks about her acclaimed novel The Vegetarian

Malm was able to talk to Han Kang on the phone, he said. She was having an ordinary day and had “just finished supper with her son” when he broke the news to her.

Updated

And the winner is Han Kang

The South Korean writer has been announced as the latest Nobel laureate in literature

We’re very close to knowing this year’s Nobel prize in literature winner! Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Nobel committee, will soon take the stage to announce this year’s prize, before Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee, awards the prize.

Updated

The Nobel prize live video has just shared the fact that Doris Lessing is the oldest winner of the literature prize to date – the perfect opportunity to share her iconic reaction video

The livestream has started

Not long to wait now! You can watch along here:

Possible contender: Salman Rushdie

If 77-year-old British American author Salman Rushdie is named as the new Nobel laureate in literature today, he will be the first Indian-born author to take home the prize since poet Rabindranath Tagore in 1913.

Rushdie has written 15 novels, his latest being Victory City, as well as many works of nonfiction. His most recent book, Knife, was a memoir in which he recounted being attacked on stage in New York in August 2022.

He has been shortlisted for the Booker prize five times, winning the award in 1981 for Midnight’s Children. The book also won the Booker of Bookers in 1994 and the Best of the Booker in 2008, to mark the 25th and 40th anniversaries of the prize.

Earlier this month, he told an audience at Lviv BookForum that he is writing a new work of fiction which will comprise three novellas, each running to about 70 pages and relating to one of “the three worlds in my life: India and England and America”.

“Can Xue is a solid bet,” says Guardian critic John Self. “She’s political, stylistically interesting and also a win for her would help the academy overcome its (self-acknowledged) weakness for European men. I’ve also heard people talking about Don DeLillo today, but he seems an unlikely choice - too surface-depth (said as someone who likes a bit of that) and the academy has never displayed an appetite for the big American novelists of the late 20th century before. They said in 2008 that it was too isolated and insular, and DeLillo probably exemplifies that.”

Possible contender: Alexis Wright

Alexis Wright’s latest novel, Praiseworthy, is the only book to have won both the Miles Franklin and Stella prize, two of Australia’s most prestigious literary awards. It also won the UK’s James Tait Black memorial prize. Could the Waanyi author also be taking home the world’s biggest literary prize today?

Praiseworthy, published by And Other Stories in the UK, is set in the Aboriginal community it is named after and structured into 10 parts, each narrated by a different oracle. “As in all Wright’s work, Praiseworthy depicts cruel, unjust, hypocritical and violent characters struggling against cruel, unjust, hypocritical and violent circumstances: a realist’s view of colonisation, in short”, wrote Declan Fry in a Guardian review last year.

Her other novels are Plains of Promise, Carpentaria and The Swan Book. Her non-fiction works include Grog War, about an Indigenous movement to introduce alcohol restrictions in a Northern Territory community, and Tracker, the “collective memoir” of Aboriginal leader Tracker Tilmouth.

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Nobel facts

In 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his last will, dedicating the bulk of his fortune to the establishment of the Nobel prizes. One part of the money would be awarded “to the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction”.

Since 1901, 116 Nobel prizes in literature have been awarded. The prize was often not administered during the first and second world wars – no prize was awarded in 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943.

It’s been jointly awarded only four times – most recently in 1974, when Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson shared it. Shared prizes are more common in the other Nobel prize categories.

The youngest person to receive the award was Rudyard Kipling in 1907, at the age of 41; the oldest was Doris Lessing, who received the prize in 2007 aged 87.

The prize has been awarded to 17 women and 103 men.

Two writers have turned it down. The 1958 winner Boris Pasternak initially accepted the award but later refused it under pressure from the Soviet Union. The 1964 literature laureate Jean Paul Sartre declined it because he had consistently declined honours.

Possible contender: César Aira

Argentinian writer César Aira has written more than 100 books. The secret to his prolific pace may lie in the writing method he developed early on, fuga hacia adelante, meaning “forward flight” – he writes and does not look back until he reaches the end of a story.

For several years, Aira’s name has been raised as a possible Nobel winner. “I already know that every October, until my death, I’m going to have to put up with that,” he said in an interview earlier this year. He said that, sometimes, the speculation proves useful: “For instance, now we live in a more luxurious apartment, one a little beyond my circumstances. And they rent to me because they see that I am a candidate for the Nobel.”

His novels, a handful of which are published in English in the UK, include Los Fantasmas (Ghosts, translated by Chris Andrews), El Divorcio (The Divorce, translated by Chris Andrews), and La Costurera y el Viento (The Seamstress and the Wind, translated by Rosalie Knecht). In 2015, he was nominated for the International Booker prize.

Updated

Gerald Murnane: ‘I’m satisfied at the moment, and if I never win the prize I’ll be satisfied’

Australian writer Gerald Murnane has long been tipped to win the Nobel prize. He is best known for his 1982 novel, The Plains, narrated by a filmmaker who travels to a vast land in the centre of an alternate Australia to capture the culture of its rich inhabitants. His other novels include Border Districts, A Million Windows and Inland.

“It’s about 10 years now since people first talked about me as a possible winner of the Nobel,” he told ABC News this week. “It’s possible, that’s all I can see, and it would be a wonderful result. But I’m satisfied at the moment, and if I never win the prize I’ll be satisfied with being – and I have to say this, it’s not a boast, it’s a statement of fact – I am the only Australian writer, and there’s plenty of Australian writers, I’m the only one who gets mentioned every year as a likely winner of the Nobel, so I take a lot of pride and satisfaction from that.”

Updated

Could AI really win this year’s prize?! It does feel like AI’s year: the Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield this year for their work on machine learning, and the chief executive of Google’s AI unit, Sir Demis Hassabis, was jointly awarded the chemistry prize on Wednesday.

Last year, Norwegian writer Jon Fosse won the Nobel, having long been tipped for it. Check out Catherine Taylor’s guide to his work here

Bets suspended on Alexis Wright – but why?

Earlier this week, Ladbrokes had been accepting bets on today’s winner (bets are now closed). However, punters weren’t able to bet on one of the listed candidates: Alexis Wright.

There has been some speculation on X as to why bets were suspended:

As well as possible explanations:

Ladbrokes have been approached for comment.

Updated

Why a European winner seems unlikely

By awarding the Nobel prize in literature to France’s Annie Ernaux in 2022 and Norway’s Jon Fosse in 2023, the Swedish Academy has kept the award on the European continent for two years in a row. So it’s no surprise that the bookies are betting on a writer from another continent to receive the accolade this year.

Chinese avant-garde fiction writer Can Xue leads the pack, 12 years after Mo Yan last brought the prize to the People’s Republic. Other names being whispered in the corridors of publishers and literary agencies are those of the Antiguan-American novelist Jamaica Kincaid, Australian Gerald Murnane and Argentinian writer César Aira.

But the academy is notorious for its unpredictability, even more so after two new members joined last December. “I think they’ve gone to great pains to find some writer that will catch the culture commentariat with their pants down,” Dagens Nyheter’s culture editor Bjorn Wiman has said.

So a third consecutive European winner seems unlikely but not impossible. Two names in particular are mentioned again and again: Hungarian László Krasznahorkai and Romanian Mircea Cărtărescu.

Both are highly versatile and playful writers, who bely eastern Europe’s gloomy literary reputation: 68-year-old Cărtărescu used to mostly write poetry while his country was behind the Iron Curtain but has received most international attention for his novel trilogy Orbitor, published in English by Archipelago Books as Blinding. Cărtărescu has described himself as part of a “postmodern” generation of Romanian writers who eschewed the heavy expressionism of its predecessors in favour of something more ironic, playful and fantastical.

Krasznahorkai, a longtime collaborator of Hungarian film director Béla Tarr, too is often described as postmodern. His dystopian but comedic novels, such as 1985’s Satantango and 1989’s The Melancholy of Resistance interweave light and shade. His most recent, Herscht 07769, centres around a man who writes Angela Merkel letters about Johann Sebastian Bach and particle physics. It was published in Ottilie Mulzet’s English translation by New Directions this September.

Updated

Independent publisher Fitzcarraldo celebrated its 10th birthday last month, and at the anniversary party founder and publisher Jacques Testard thanked the Swedish academy in his speech “for having almost exactly the same taste as us”. And it is astonishing – Fitzcarraldo is the UK publisher of five Nobel laureates: Jon Fosse; Annie Ernaux; Olga Tokarczuk; Elfriede Jelinek and Svetlana Alexievich. After Ernaux’s win, Anna Cafolla found out more about “the little publisher that could”.

Who is the bookies’ favourite, Can Xue?

Chinese writer Can Xue has been the bookies’ favourite to win the Nobel for two years running. Will 2024 finally be her year?

Can Xue is the pen name of Deng Xiaohua, born 1953 in Changsha, Hunan Province, in South China. In the late 50s, her parents, who worked at a newspaper, were condemned as ultra-rightists. Her father was sentenced to re-education through labour and in 1967, during the Cultural Revolution, he was jailed.

Can Xue couldn’t continue her education, graduating only from elementary school. She is largely an autodidact; she read western and Russian literature while working as a teacher, a tailor and a “barefoot doctor” providing basic health care.

She began writing in the 80s, developing her distinctive avant-garde style. She has since written many novels, novellas and essays. In 2019 and 2021, she was longlisted for the International Booker prize, with Love in the New Millennium (translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen) and then I Live in the Slums (translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping).

If she is named the new Nobel laureate today, she will be the 18th woman to receive the prize and the second Chinese citizen to win after 2012 laureate Mo Yan.

Critic and author David Hering said that he would “love” Can Xue to win. “A true heir to Kafka and Lispector. You never know where you’re going to be at the end of one of her sentences.”

Updated

Last year’s winner: Jon Fosse

In 2023, Norwegian author Jon Fosse took home the prize “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”.

His works include the Septology series of novels, Aliss at the Fire, Melancholy and A Shining.

“Fosse blends a rootedness in the language and nature of his Norwegian background with artistic techniques in the wake of modernism,” said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel committee for literature, at the time.

He was the fourth Norwegian to win the prize, and the first to write in Nynorsk, one of the two official written forms of the Norwegian language.

During his laureate speech in December last year, he said that his first books were “quite poorly reviewed” and that if had listened to critics, he would have stopped writing 40 years ago.

Fosse’s UK publisher is Fitzcarraldo Editions, which also publishes Annie Ernaux, the winner of the 2022 Nobel prize in literature. Fosse’s win marked the independent publisher’s third win in five years, after Olga Tokarczuk was made laureate in 2018.

Updated

Here’s what the bookies have been saying about who it might be this year…

How the Nobel works

How is the Nobel laureate in literature chosen?

First, the Nobel committee – made up of a handful of writers – sends out nomination forms to hundreds of individuals and organisations. These include:

  • Members of the 18-person Swedish Academy and of other academies, institutions and societies which are similar to it in construction and purpose

  • Professors of literature and of linguistics at universities and university colleges

  • Previous Nobel prize laureates in literature

  • Presidents of those societies of authors that are representative of the literary production in their respective countries

Once the nomination forms are in, the Nobel committee then filters the nominations and submits a list for approval by the academy. The committee whittles the list down to 15-20 names, and then five.

Next, members of the academy read the work of the nominees, before conferring in September. In early October, they vote on the next Nobel laureate in literature – a candidate must receive more than half of the votes cast.

Updated

Welcome to the Guardian’s Nobel prize in literature live blog, as we wait in anticipation for the 2024 laureate to be revealed. The coveted award, which has been won by writers including Kazuo Ishiguro, Annie Ernaux and Harold Pinter, is given to “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, according to the will of Alfred Nobel.

Will this year be the year for Chinese avant garde author Can Xue, who has been bookmaker Ladbrokes’ favourite for the last two years? Might it go to Thomas Pynchon, Margaret Atwood or Haruki Murakami? Or will it be a choice that takes us all completely by surprise – like when Bob Dylan won in 2016?

Join Ella Creamer, Philip Oltermann and me for the next hour or so as we post live updates leading up to the announcement at 12pm BST (1pm CEST).

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