For me, to write is to endlessly question what is life, what is death, what am I. When I write, especially when I’m writing novels, I’m exchanging on… - Han Kang

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For me, to write is to endlessly question what is life, what is death, what am I. When I write, especially when I’m writing novels, I’m exchanging one, two, three, sometimes four years for that book. So when I feel that I’m going forward as a writer, when I see that I explored what it means to be human in a certain way in this book and I went another way in another book, that’s when I’m glad that I became a writer.

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About Han Kang

Han Kang (born November 27, 1970) is a South Korean writer. She won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2016 for her novel The Vegetarian. She was awarded Nobel Prize in literature in 2024.

Also Known As

Native Name: 韓江
Alternative Names: Han Gang
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Additional quotes by Han Kang

I believe that trauma is something to be embraced rather than healed or recovered from. I believe that grief is something which situates the place/space of the dead within the living; and that, through repeatedly revisiting that place, through our pained and silent embrace of it over the course of a whole life, life is, perhaps paradoxically, made possible.

No. I have run away from a lot of publicity. I have tried my best to come back to my desk again. I needed a peaceful corner of my own for my next work. But it took time. Now I am adjusting myself to these new circumstances. I will try to write my next book as soon as possible.

Humans will not hesitate to lay down their own lives to rescue a child who had fallen onto the train tracks, yet are also perpetrators of appalling violence, like in Auschwitz. The broad spectrum of humanity, which runs from the sublime to the brutal, has for me been like a difficult homework problem ever since I was a child. You could say that my books are variations on this theme of human violence.

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