Han Kang’s eye for the vulnerability of the body
Published: Thursday, Oct 10th 2024, 17:10
Back to Live Feed
Literary scholar Salomé Meier is delighted that Han Kang has now been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis at the University of Zurich and is writing about Han Kang, among other things.
What is appealing to readers from Central Europe about the books by South Korean author Han Kang?
Salomé Meier: Han Kang's novel "The Vegetarian" illustrates a cultural difference. In our country, it's hardly worth mentioning if women don't eat meat. It's quite different in South Korea. Meat consumption there is firmly anchored in the cultural self-image. In the novel, a woman gives up meat. This gesture of abstinence stands for the fact that the woman withdraws from male domination. Han Kang's novels are often about women escaping the pressure of male-dominated South Korean society. Han Kang often narrates this withdrawal through a transformation in which women turn into something other than human.
The Nobel Committee writes that Han Kang's poetic and experimental style has made her an "innovator of contemporary prose". How do you explain that?
Meier: Han Kang is always finding a new language. But many of her works are about the vulnerability of female bodies. The author tells of this vulnerability through the body, not through words. Han Kang's prose is suggestive and symbolic. It is disturbing, often incomprehensible - and it demands thought.
That sounds gloomy.
Meier: "Weiss" is less a novel than a long poem. In it, Han Kang tells of white things in a lyrical way: the white of snow, the white of a diaper, the white of breast milk. Behind these objects, an (autobiographically authenticated) memory shimmers, which lies before the narrator's time: The memory of her older sister, who died as a newborn in her mother's arms. The text wrestles with this silent tragedy that shaped the family's life and imposes itself on the narrator in Weiss's images. Despite all the gloom, however, there is always a brightness, a consolation that the narrator finds in the beauty of things, of art.
Which books would you recommend to readers who want to read Han Kang for the first time?
Meier: Kang was awarded the Booker Prize in 2016 for "The Vegetarian", which made her popular with us. That's an introduction. Or "Your Cold Hands" (2019): it's about a woman who becomes the medium for an art project. In both books, a female character frees herself from male projection
How do you rate the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature?
Meier: Given that I am writing my doctoral thesis on Han Kang, among other things, I am particularly pleased about this recognition. And I hope for more translations. So far, only five of her works have been translated into German and, apart from "Deine kalten Hände", which was originally published in 2002, mainly those that came after the Booker Prize in 2016. It would be nice if we could now also get to know Han Kang's earlier works.
©Keystone/SDA
English 
German 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic