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HAN KANG has been called “Korea’s Kafka”. Rather than giant bugs, her metamorphoses involve vegetation. “The Fruit of My Woman”, a short story, imagines a wife becoming a (withered) houseplant. “The Vegetarian”, a prizewinning novel, depicts a woman consumed by her desire to sprout roots and become a tree.
On October 10th Ms Han became the first writer from South Korea to win the Nobel prize in literature, a plaudit which comes with a bonus of SKr11m ($1m). The Swedish Academy praised her slim, surreal books for their “intense poetic prose”, which confronts both “historical traumas” and “the fragility of human life”. She chronicles cruelty, particularly against...