Korean retailers report strong sales for Light and Thread, featuring speeches, essays and poems by novelist
A book featuring Han Kang’s Nobel prize lecture sold 10,000 copies in its first day on sale online.
Light and Thread, which takes its title from Han’s December lecture, is her first book to be published in South Korea since she was announced as the winner of the Nobel prize in literature last October.
Continue reading...After Han Kang’s Nobel award and South Korean cinema hits, Penguin publishes new English edition of maxims by Lee Seong-bok in wake of US success
A collection of wise maxims written by a 72-year old poet, calmly setting out illuminating advice to other poets, is the latest and perhaps most unlikely book to benefit from a surge in demand for South Korean literature.
“Kick against words like you would kick back on a swing. You’ve got to feel as if the soles of your feet are touching the sky,” suggests Lee Seong-bok in his hit title Indeterminate Inflorescence.
Continue reading...Han, whose works include The Vegetarian, was praised for her ‘intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life’
The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to 53-year-old South Korean novelist Han Kang for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. Her works include The Vegetarian, The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons.
“I was able to talk to Han Kang on the phone,” said Swedish Academy permanent secretary Mats Malm after announcing the winner. “She was having an ordinary day it seemed – had just finished supper with her son. She wasn’t really prepared for this, but we have begun to discuss preparations for December” – when Han will be presented with the Nobel prize.
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