Description

2024 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Han Kang
To live as a human being in this world until the end,
About that miraculous act
A classic of Han Kang's literature reborn
On the road, quietly tying knots
A deep line drawn by connecting three dots
Reading the Han Kang of yesterday that made today's Han Kang. Han Kang began her literary career by publishing five poems, including "Winter in Seoul," in the winter issue of the literary journal "Literature and Society" in 1993, and won the short story contest in the following year with her story "Red Anchor" in the "Seoul Newspaper." This is a revised edition of all three of her published short story collections to date. Han Kang has received numerous awards, including the Korean Novel Literature Prize (1999), Today's Young Artist Award (2000), Yi Sang Literary Prize (2005), Dongri Literary Prize (2010), Manhae Literary Prize (2014), Hwang Sun-won Literary Prize (2015), International Booker Prize (2016), Malaparte Literary Prize (2017), Kim Yu-jeong Literary Prize (2018), San Clemente Literary Prize (2019), Daesan Literary Prize (2022), Medici Foreign Literature Prize (2023), Emil Gimme Asian Literature Prize (2024), and the Nobel Prize in Literature (2024). Through her solid and delicate sentences, she examines the loneliness and pain rooted in life, resonating with the present era.
Han Kang, the first Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, has published three short story collections. The three books, containing works written over 17 years from 1995 to 2012, were re-released in 2018 with new designs. It can be seen as a careful effort to place the three books, each with different colors and formats, on a single line. The first book, "Love in Yeosu," is a collection of short stories written in a whirlwind over the course of a year when the author was in her early twenties. In her second collection, "The Fruit of My Woman," published five years later, Han Kang seems to encounter the ordinary truth that "the process of change is precisely me, like flowing water," only to ask again, "Who was the person who wrote each of these stories?" ("Author's Note") Twelve years later, she published her third collection, "The Yellow Room." In the meantime, she wrote novels such as "Your Cold Hands," "The Vegetarian," "The Wind Blows, Go Away," and "Greek Language Time."
Short stories have a quality like a match flame.
First, you strike the match and watch it burn with all your might until it goes out.
Those moments pushed me forward with great force.
-‘Author's Note’ (2012), "The Yellow Room"
You can only discover a trajectory by looking back. There are things that have changed and things that have not changed in Han Kang's short stories during the publication of the three collections. In "Love in Yeosu," the longing for humanity and the world is expressed earnestly, where lonely and isolated beings leave, abandon, wander, and fall. In "The Fruit of My Woman," they awkwardly try to accept the world and each other, only to end up hurting. By the time of "The Yellow Room," the will to regenerate and despair ignite life more strongly. Dignified beings, while still suffering, finally attempt to embrace each other. Somewhere they must ultimately return, the leaves pushing up the veins, the flowers blooming in recovery, and the natural changes and flows they sought to capture harmonize with the works of photographer Lee Jeong-jin used on the cover.
On the other hand, what remains unchanged may be Han Kang's fierce questioning. She continues to ask, "I want to live, I must live, how should I live?" throughout twenty-one stories, questioning the existence of humanity, life and death, and this world, yet inevitably cannot reach an answer. However, the question itself, like a pale flame, along with the heat of loneliness and careful sorrow derived from the question, becomes the power that loves and keeps us alive within the works. Though changed, some things remain the same, so I carefully rearranged the placement of the stories and refined some expressions, but I left what needed to remain untouched.
Earlier, in response to the question of “who” in "The Fruit of My Woman," I connect it with the newly written author's note in "The Yellow Room." I encourage you to retrace that trajectory together. Someone has been writing alone for over twenty years. Han Kang is still walking.
I know. The twelve years spent writing these stories can never return, and I can never meet that vividly alive self who was writing all these sentences again. I believe that this fact should not feel like a loss. This must not be a farewell, for I am someone who wants to continue writing and living.
-‘Author's Note’ (2018), "The Yellow Room"
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Delicately examining the essential loneliness and hardship of life,
The author's first book that depicts the loss of existence and wandering
"Love in Yeosu"
Published in 1995, this is the author's first book and first collection of short stories, which has been revised to change the arrangement of the stories and refine some expressions. "Love in Yeosu" delicately examines the essential loneliness and hardship of life, depicting the loss of existence and wandering.
The story of a father who attempted a double suicide with his children after losing his wife, abandoned at Seoul Station by a train from Yeosu ("Love in Yeosu"), In-kyu, who witnessed his brother's death ("The Rush"), Dong-geol, who must live the life of his twin brother who has become a vegetable ("Night Train"), Jeong-hwan, who fled his hometown abandoning his mentally challenged younger sister ("Azalea Ridge"), and Young-jin and In-sook, who wander like orphans, trying to find themselves after abandoning their homes and hometowns ("The Dark Carnival"). Yeosu is the name of the sorrowful heart that those who are wounded and sick finally reach. In seven short stories infused with a serious perspective on fate and death, lonely and isolated characters leave, abandon, wander, and fall. Awakening the existence of being alive close to death, those who do not cease their longing for humanity and the world leave behind a cold yet warm aftertaste.
I am confident that "Love in Yeosu" will not lose its light to the erosion of time and will survive strongly because the opposing pair of life is death, and life next to death bears the inevitable fate of losing love, and wounds force a 'rebirth' that accompanies death, which is the most fearful enemy and obstacle, but at the same time, the value of such 'rebirth' is what enables humans to live as 'humans,' leading to profound and profound reflections on the layers of the spirit. _Kang Gye-sook (Literary Critic)