Han Kang

Han Kang (Gwangju, South Korea, 1970) studied Korean literature at the University of Yonsei. The Vegetarian (2017) is her first novel translated into English, Spanish and Catalan, with which she won the Man Booker Prize International in 2016. The book narrates the story of a woman who decides to stop all violence exercised by the body and disconnect from the human animal, to become an entirely plant-like being.

Her next novel was Human Acts (2018), which earned her the Manhae Literary Award and the Korean Literature Novel Award. The text recalls the Gwangju massacre, the popular uprising that took place in 1980 against the dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan, and which Kang escaped when she moved to Seoul with her family at 10 years of age. Today, Han Kang teaches creative writing classes at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. In her new novel Greek Lessons, Kang revisits the effects of oppressive Korean society and its symbolic violence on the individual.