I dare not read it a second time. To what extent is the book of Han Kang, the female Nobel Prize-winning author, "crazy"?

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At 13:00 on October 10, 2024, Swedish time, the official website of the Nobel Prize officially announced that The 18th Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the South Korean female writer Han Kang. This is the first female writer in South Korea and even the entire Asia to win the award. The citation of the Swedish Academy for her is: Using intense poetic prose to confront historical trauma and expose the fragility of human life.

Many readers may be unfamiliar with Han Kang, and her name is rarely seen on the odds list of betting companies. Therefore, many media use the term "upset" to describe this Nobel Prize. Who is Han Kang? What works has she written? Why did she win the award? The public is not familiar with her, but in the more "aloof" literary circle, she has already gained a significant reputation -

In 2005, at the age of only 35, Han Kang won the Yi Sang Literature Prize, the highest literary award in South Korea, with her short story "Mongolian Spot";

In 2016, she won the Man Booker Prize, one of the world's three major literary awards known as the "highest award in contemporary English fiction novels", with her novella "The Vegetarian" (English translation). Many Nobel Prize winners competed with her;

In 2017, with "The Boy Who Escaped" (free translation), she won the Marabatti Literature Prize, known as the "Italian Nobel Prize in Literature";

In 2018, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize again with the prose and novel collection "White" (English translation), and "The Boy Who Escaped" (English translation) was also shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award at the same time.

There is no doubt that this female writer, Han Kang, who is good at depicting human loneliness and sadness with delicate emotions, is finally leading South Korean literature out of East Asia.

Regarding Han Kang and her works, we try to sort them out with the following Ten Keywords.

Important Works: Mute Women and the Inquiry into Human Violence

Literary Family

Han Kang was born in Gwangju, Jeollanam-do Province in southwestern South Korea in 1970. When she was 9 years old, she moved to Seoul, the capital, with her family.

Her father, Han Seung-won, was an important representative figure in the South Korean literary world in the 1970s. He has works such as "Daughter of Fire", "Pukou", and "Sea Sun", and has won the Yi Sang Literature Prize, the highest literary award in South Korea; Han Kang's elder brother, Han Dong-lin, and younger brother, Han Gang-in, are also novelists; Her husband, Hong Young-hee, is a university professor and literary critic. Both of their children are now engaged in literary writing-related work. It is a complete literary family.

She once said in an interview: Thanks to my father, I grew up in a sea of books, which is a great fortune as a writer.

Photo of Han Kang

Growing up in a literary environment, it is natural for her to fall in love with literature. At the age of 14, she clearly set her goal of writing as her lifelong ambition. In 1993, Han Kang graduated from the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Yonsei University, one of the top three universities in South Korea ("SKY"), which is equivalent to the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University in China. She has a natural writing gene. She then began to create poetry, prose, and novels, and naturally embarked on the literary path and has been active until now.

"The Vegetarian"

The Nobel Prize Committee of the Swedish Academy never considers whether a writer can win the award based on a single work, but there is no doubt that "The Vegetarian" (published in 2007) is Han Kang's most important representative work, and it may be the biggest consideration for her to win the award.

"The Vegetarian" Cover

This book is very short, with only 75,000 words and can be read in two hours. It tells the story of an ordinary and mundane wife, Yeong-hye, who decides to stop eating meat after having a strange dream and waking up the next morning. She throws away all the meat products in the refrigerator, doesn't wear a bra, doesn't wear makeup, doesn't wear leather shoes, and even refuses to have sex with her husband, "because he smells of meat."

Her strange behavior causes dissatisfaction from her husband, and the husband, along with his father-in-law's family, begins to strongly criticize her for not eating meat at a family gathering. In order to force his daughter to eat meat, the father, who participated in the Vietnam War and has absolute authority in the family, even forces her to open her mouth by violence. Unexpectedly, Yeong-hye grabs a fruit knife and cuts her wrist to commit suicide.

Subsequently, her not eating meat gradually evolves into not eating at all but only drinking water, going out naked to enjoy the sun, and not sleeping. She desires to become a tree, and her behavior is becoming more and more like a tree. Yes, in the eyes of outsiders, Yeong-hye has gone insane and become a crazy woman.

Without a tumultuous storyline, the author's description of daily life is precise enough. As the plot progresses, we learn more about Yeong-hye's past. When she was a child, a dog bit her, and the dog was dragged to death by her father on a motorcycle and then eaten by the whole family; She was "beaten on the calves by such a father until she was eighteen"; After going crazy, her husband divorces her, her brother-in-law rapes her, and her sister sends her to a mental hospital. Until her life is on the verge of death, Yeong-hye finally escapes the suffocating marriage and her fate of being controlled and tortured.

The pain in the text is real and accustomed, often overlooked, so that many people cannot relate to her behavior when they start reading, and even understand the choices of the family, until they slowly savor the reality in it.

For example, from the husband's perspective on why they got married:

"The reason why I married a woman like this is that she has no particular charm, and at the same time, I can't find any particular shortcomings. In her ordinary personality, I can't see the bright, perceptive, and mature side. Because of this, I feel comfortable. In this way, I don't need to pretend to be knowledgeable to win her heart, nor do I need to be flustered for being late for a date, nor do I need to embarrass myself by comparing myself with the men in fashion magazines. My bulging abdomen after the age of twenty-five, my thin limbs that can't grow muscles no matter how hard I try, and my short penis that always makes me feel inferior, these are all irrelevant to her. Because of this, marrying the most ordinary woman in the world has become my logical choice."

"She is the most ordinary woman I have chosen over and over again in this world."

For example, when Yeong-hye first stops eating meat and her husband's life is affected, he doesn't want to divorce yet, and he can even rape her while厌恶ing her:

"I sometimes think that it's not so bad to live with a strange woman like this. Just consider her as an outsider, no, it's not bad to see her as my sister who does the laundry, cooks, and cleans the room, or as a nanny."

"For a young and vigorous man who, although he feels that life is dull, still wants to maintain the marriage, long-term abstinence is an unbearable thing." "When I held down her arms that were desperately resisting and pulled down her pants, I actually felt an inexplicable pleasure. At this moment, my wife lay expressionlessly in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Her expression, as if she had gone through countless hardships and hardships, made me extremely厌恶."

When Yeong-hye is admitted to the hospital and he needs to take on the responsibility of a husband, his inner thoughts are, "This long Sunday is coming to an end, and I am about to迎来 a brand new Monday, which means I don't have to stay with this woman anymore." Eventually, he still chooses to divorce, and divorcing a crazy woman gives him a moral advantage.

In the text, Yeong-hye is mute, but many dialogues in Yeong-hye's original family can show her living situation. Such a childhood and marriage have pushed her step by step into an inhuman life.

Just as a netizen's book review says: "It's just that she wants to be a standing tree and a flying bird, but she can't. This is a suppressed nation, and women who live more suppressed and resilient can only use self-harm and rejection to empower themselves and protest. What supports people from going crazy is responsibility and heavy pressure, but what imprisons people is also these things."

"The Vegetarian Wife"

Compared to the well-known "The Vegetarian", this sister work was actually created earlier (published in 2002), and it is also shorter and more concise.

"The Vegetarian Wife" Cover

The story is that one day, a husband returns home and finds his wife kneeling on the balcony and turning into a plant - "My wife is kneeling facing the iron railing of the balcony, with her arms raised high. Her body is a deep grass green. Her face has become as smooth as the leaves of an evergreen broad-leaved tree. Her hair, like dried cabbage, flows with the luster of the green wild grass stems. There are a pair of eyes faintly闪烁ing on her grass-green face. Looking at me backing away, my wife tries to stand up. But she only trembles in her legs, it seems that she can't stand up or walk. My wife sways her waist painfully and tremulously from side to side. Between her dark green lips, her退化ed tongue is晃动ing like water plants. Her teeth are gone without a trace."

The author's description is full of poetry and absurdity. The husband is not interested in his wife's transformation like in "The Metamorphosis", but instead is filled with厌恶: "What's wrong with my wife? I can't understand what kind of pain can cause a psychological disorder. How can this woman make me so lonely? What right does she have to make me lonely? Whenever I think of these questions, a blank厌恶sensation堆积s like layers of dust over the years."

As the plot progresses, readers can also see that this is also a woman who is trapped in a marriage life and is desperate about the uniform display of the city. After graduation, the wife had saved a sum of money to travel around the world and live in different places, but at this critical moment, "I" proposed to her. In order to fulfill her responsibility as a wife, she promised the words "I can't leave you anyway" and has been practicing it. She used the money to go to the end of the world to pay the rent and deposit, and to cover the cost of the marriage; She has been a diligent housewife for the past three years, preparing and settling everything for her husband.

The author does not describe what the wife has experienced in the four years of marriage life, but from the husband's perspective, everything is so peaceful and sweet, "The past three years have been the warmest and most stable period for me. A job that is not too tiring or difficult, a landlord who does not increase the rent, the housing subscription fee that is about to expire, a wife who is not particularly coquettish but is loyal to me, everything抚摸s my tired body like the water in a bathtub that is just the right temperature." Until one day, the wife irreversibly turns into a plant.

The story also does not have a complete ending, it seems to be just a fragment of life. Han Kang used this as a blueprint to continue to create the later more complete "The Vegetarian".

The women in both stories have the same loneliness, are equally isolated from the social operation, and equally endure the patriarchy bullying in marriage. However, compared to Su Min in "Decision to Leave" who can bravely break away from the family and choose to leave, the South Korean social culture emphasizes the forbearance of women. They endure until the end and choose to hurt themselves, actively separating from humans to escape suffering.

"The Boy Who Escaped"

In "The Boy Who Escaped" (published in 2014), as a native of Gwangju, Han Kang inevitably writes back to Gwangju. This story is based on the real historical "Gwangju 518 Incident". Compared to the invisible violence in the family, this book tells about the violence of society and the state machinery against individuals.

"The Boy Who Escaped" Cover

In 1980, the wave of social democratization in South Korea came, and demonstrations were held in various places to resist the then President Chun Doo-hwan. Dong-ho, a 15-year-old junior high school student, went to the streets with his friends, but encountered the army's cold-blooded suppression of demonstrators. Many of his friends and many other teenagers lost their lives. Since then, everyone who has been exposed to this incident has been living with guilt, and the mothers who have lost their children are living alone. The sentence "I didn't hold a funeral for you, and my whole life has become a funeral" expresses Han Kang's inner emotions.

"White"

The preface introduction says that this is a book that cannot be classified. The book writes about 66 different forms of white of things such as snow, swaddling clothes, doors, milk, and baby clothes. Each introduction of white is a short and beautiful prose poem. Han Kang said that in Korean, white has two meanings, one is the white that purely defines the color, like cotton candy, and the other is the