Latest news with #HumanActs
Hans India
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Hans India
South Korean presidential candidates honor victims of 1980 pro-democracy uprising
Some presidential candidates honored victims of the pro-democracy uprising in Gwangju on Sunday by visiting a cemetery where protesters who were killed 45 years ago were laid. Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, the minor New Reform Party's Lee Jun-seok and the minor Justice Party's Kwon Young-kook were among some 2,500 attendees who took part in the ceremony at the May 18th National Cemetery. On May 18, 1980, demonstrators in Gwangju, including students, protested against the then ruling junta led by Chun Doo-hwan, who seized power in a military coup the previous year. The military conducted a bloody crackdown, leaving hundreds dead, Yonhap news agency reported. "Going toward the future by respecting others' differences and sharing their pain is the true way to repay for Gwangju that May," acting President Lee Ju-ho said at the ceremony. "The spirit of solidarity and unity that Gwangju demonstrated that May 45 years ago is a teaching that is needed today." The ceremony featured various performances dedicated to activists who died during the uprising, including Moon Jae-hak, who was the inspiration for a character in Nobel literature laureate Han Kang's novel "Human Acts." The event concluded with all of the participants, including the presidential candidates, acting President Lee and National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik, singing the song "March for the Beloved" that symbolises the pro-democracy uprising. Meanwhile, the May 18 Foundation, a civic group dedicated to commemorating the pro-democracy movement, expressed "strong regret" over Lee's speech, saying that it did not mention efforts to support the movement, such as outlining the May 18 spirit in the Constitution. The government has held a ceremony marking the pro-democracy uprising every year after May 18 was designated as a memorial day in 1997.
The Hindu
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Notable writers in the past year
Each year, April 23 is celebrated as World Book and Copyright Day. Established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as a way to celebrate the power of books, it was first celebrated in 1995. A symbolic day in world literature, April 23 marks the death anniversary of several beloved authors, including William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes and Inca Garciloso de la Vega. As part of the celebration, a World Book Capital is selected by UNESCO and international organizations representing publishers, booksellers and libraries— the three major sectors of the book industry. This year it is Rio De Janeiro, taking over from Strasbourg in 2024. Of course, no book industry would exist or be sustained without authors, the creatives at the base of it all. Initiatives have also sought to expand audience access to writers from minority communities, across caste and gender lines. As readers revel in their favourite books and sort through new treasures, we take a look at some notable women authors who have taken home the top honours of the writing world over the past year. Nobel Prize in Literature 2024- Han Kang The Nobel Prize in Literature 2024 was awarded to South Korean writer Han Kang, 'for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.' Ms. Kang was born in Gwangju, South Korea, before moving to Seoul at the age of nine. The daughter of a novelist, she is also interested in art and music. She began her writing journey with poetry in 1993, following up with prose in 1995. Some of her works include Your Cold Hands (2002), The Wind Blows, Go (2010), The Vegetarian (2015), Human Acts (2016) and Greek Lessons (2023). Her international breakthrough came with The Vegetarian, a three-part work that traces what happens after its female protagonist embraces vegetarianism, a seemingly innocuous act that spurs a series of dark consequences. 2016's Human Acts, meanwhile, has as its backdrop the 1980 uprisings in Gwanju, where hundreds of civilians were murdered by the South Korean military. The Nobel Prize website highlights that Ms. Kang has a 'unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead.' In her work, Han Kang combines explorations of historical trauma and the fragile nature of human life, it notes, calling her an innovator in contemporary prose, with a poetic and experimental style. Booker Prize - Samantha Harvey, Orbital British author Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for fiction on November 12, 2024 with Orbital— a short novel set aboard the International Space Station. The last time a British author won was in 2020, while the last time a woman won the prize was in 2019. She was one of five women on the 2024 shortlist— the largest ever in the prize's 55-year history. Ms. Harvey was awarded the £50,000 (₹53.7 lakh) prize for what she has called a 'space pastoral' about six astronauts circling the Earth. The confined characters loop through 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets over the course of a day, trapped in one another's company and transfixed by the globe's fragile beauty. Ms Harvey reportedly started the novel while lockdowns took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ms. Harvey has previously written four novels and a memoir about insomnia. Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize is awarded to writers of any nationality who write in English and have been published in the U.K and Ireland. Winners include literary heavyweights such as Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Hilary Mantel. International Booker Prize- Jenny Erpenbeck, Kairos The International Booker Prize in 2024 was awarded to Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, a German novel translated into English by Michael Hofmann. The prize awards £50,000, split equally between the author and the translator. Kairos is set in East Berlin of the 1980s, and is centred on an affair between a young woman and older man who seem to parallel the thwarted idealism of East Germany. It touches on questions of hope, freedom, loyalty and love. Ms. Erpenback, born in the erstwhile East Germany, is a playwright, opera director and novelist. She was previously longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2018 for her novel Go, Went, Gone (2017), which explores race and identity in the context of immigration and refugees flowing into Germany. International Booker Prize 2025 The shortlist for the 2025 International Booker Prize was announced on April 8, 2025. On the list are four works by women (marked here in bold): On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J Haveland (New Directions): the first of a septology which follows protagonist Tara Selter as she loops between numerous versions of November 18, having slipped out of the ordinary cycles of time. Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson: this book is a fictionalised account of the events leading to the tragic death of 27 migrants after the inflatable dinghy ferrying them across the English Channel capsizes, and French authorities redirected them to British officials for rescue. Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda (Soft Skull): a work of speculative fiction set in a future Tokyo, where humans are on cusp of extinction, and the world is peopled, among other things, by robot children made in factories. Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes: a sociological novel reflecting on the empty nature of contemporary existence, following a Berlin couple in their increasingly radical attempts to break out of their seemingly perfect life as they grasp at a sense of purpose and meaning. Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi (And Other Stories): a collection of short stories tracing the ordinary lives of Muslim girls and women in South India, portrayed with gentle wit and a keen eye for the quirks of human nature. This is the first time a Kannadiga author has made it to the shortlist for the International Booker prize. A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson (New Directions): this work examines a moving friendship, filled with anguish and affection, between the book's narrator and his childhood friend Fanny, a tormented young women suffering from numerous psychological disorders. This selection is narrowed down from the International Booker Longlist of 12 books, of which nine were by women. Apart from the highlighted above, these include: The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon (Syracuse UP) by Ibtisam Azem, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon (Syracuse UP) There's a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary (Feminist Press) by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary (Feminist Press) Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton (Hogarth) by Saou Ichikawa, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton (Hogarth) On a Woman's Madness by Astrid Roemer, translated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott (Two Lines) Pulitzer Prizes 2024 Another set of grand prizes in the world of literature and writing are the Pulitzer Prizes, which cover a gamut of writing disciplines, from journalism to fiction and drama. This year's awards will be given out on May 5, 2025. Here is a selection of the prizes awarded to women writers in 2024, for pieces written during the 2023-24 period. The journalism prizes Investigative Reporting: Hannah Dreier of The New York Times Ms. Dreier won the Pulitzer for Investigative reporting for her series of six stories examining migrant child labour in the United States, detailing its extent and pervasiveness, and the range of corporate and governmental lapses which allow its continuance. Start with this piece. Explanatory Reporting: Sarah Stillman of The New Yorker Ms. Stillman's work uncovered the widespread use of the felony murder charge, and its 'disparate consequences, often devastating for communities of color.' Read here. Still extant in the American legal system, the legal principle behind felony murder seeks to hold a person fully responsible for any death that occurs as a result of engaging in unlawful actions, regardless of intent, direct causation or even presence. Local Reporting: Sarah Conway of City Bureau and Trina Reynolds-Tyler of the Invisible Institute This duo won for their investigative work on missing Black girls and women in Chicago, further spurred by systemic racism and negligence by the police. Explore the project here. Feature Writing: Katie Engelhart, contributing writer, The New York Times Ms. Engelhart's win was for a nuanced exploration of a family as it deals with the progressive dementia affecting its matriarch. The piece portrays the legal and emotional challenges, and also considers the question of what constitutes a person's essential self. Read here. The prizes for non-journalistic writing: Fiction: Night Watch, by Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf) This novel is set in Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia following the Civil War. Here an injured Union soldier, a woman who suffered abuse at the hands of a Confederate solider, and her 12-year-old girl seek to heal from their wounds. Drama: Primary Trust, by Eboni Booth This drama follows a man as he finds a new job, friends and sense self worth, tackling the emotional damage he has suffered with the help of small kindnesses around him. History: No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era, by Jacqueline Jones (Basic Books) This is a retelling of life in Boston for free Black individuals, that delves into the city's abolitionist legacy and the struggles of Black working class individuals as the Civil war tensions roiled on. Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, by Ilyon Woo (Simon & Schuster) The book follows the Crafts, a couple who escaped from slavery in Georgia in 1848. To make their way to freedom, the light-skinned Ellen disguised herself as a white gentleman with a disability, while William posed as 'his' manservant. After reaching the North, the couple became famous as abolitionists. Memoir or Autobiography: Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice, by Cristina Rivera Garza (Hogarth) The winning memoir traces the story of the author's sister, murdered at age 20 by a former boyfriend. Ms. Garza combines a memoir and biography with investigative journalism, in a narrative shaped by her own loss and a determination to arrive at the truth. Sahitya Akademi Awards 2024 Twenty-three writers received India's top literary honour in a ceremony on March 8, 2025. Of these, English author Easterine Kire received the award for her novel Spirit Nights, while Sohan Kaul won the award for her Kashmiri novel Psychiatric Ward. Among the poets receiving the award, Hindi poet Gagan Gill was honoured for her poetry book Main Jab Tak Aai Bahar, Paul Kaur for her Punjabi book on poetry Sun Gunvanta Sun Budhivanta: Itihaasnama Punjab and Haobam Satyabati Devi for her Manipuri book of poetry Mainu Bora Nungshi Sheirol. The Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, was given to 23 writers. This award recognises the works of authors below the age of 35, writing in one of India's major languages. K. Vaishali received the award for her memoir Homeless: Growing up Lesbian and Dyslexic in India. Other honourees were Sutapa Chakraborty (Bengali), Self Made Rani Baro (Bodo), Heena Choudhary (Dogri), Rinku Rathod (Gujarati), Shruti B.R. (Kannada), Rinki Jha Rishika (Maithili), Sonali Sutar (Rajasthani), and Geeta Pradeep Rupani (Sindhi).
Asia Times
24-03-2025
- Politics
- Asia Times
Three novels by Nobelist Han Kang explain South Korea's fragility
Last year, South Korea made headlines around the world for two reasons. The first was writer Han Kang's celebrated Nobel prize for literature win in October; the second was far less positive. Late in the evening of December 3 2024, the country's President Yoon Suk Yeol unexpectedly declared martial law – the first time it had happened since the country became a democracy in 1987. Protestors and lawmakers rushed on to the streets to resist Yoon's decree, and martial law was annulled early the next morning at 1 am. The ensuing chaos ended on January 26, with Yoon's arrest. Protests and counter protests continue and the constitutional court of South Korea is yet to deliver its ruling on Yoon's impeachement, leaving the country's political horizons uncertain. On December 6 2024, 54-year-old Kang appeared at a press conference at the Nobel Museum, in Stockholm. Her remarks on the unfolding events in South Korea were ultimately hopeful. 'I, too, watched as individuals tried to stop tanks with their bare hands, embraced armed soldiers to de-escalate, and stood firm against approaching troops,' she said. 'These moments revealed their courage and sincerity.' This contradiction, between acts of violence and those of love, lies at the heart of Kang's work. Her novels offer an important lens for understanding Korean history and politics, and explaining the grief and strength of the Korean people. In her Nobel lecture, Kang describes finding a photobook of the Gwangju massacre in her home, as a child. The discovery left her with lasting questions: 'How are humans this violent? And yet how is it that they can simultaneously stand opposite such overwhelming violence?' Yoon's recent act echoed military dictator Chun Doo Hwan's instigation of martial law 44 years earlier. Starting May 18 1980, the military brutally suppressed a university protest, killing students and workers with clubs, bayonets and guns. But the people of Gwangju fought back, seizing weapons and forming a citizen's army that pushed the soldiers out of the town. For days, people held control of Gwangju – until the soldiers returned, killing more local people. Spanning 23 years, Human Acts tells the story of Gwangju from different perspectives, portraying not only the events of the uprising, but its afterlife in the bodies and minds of participants. For many South Korean citizens, the memory of military repression is still fresh in their minds and is what propelled them on to the streets last December. Kang's best-known novel in the UK, The Vegetarian , also uses multiple viewpoints to tell the story of Yeong-hye, a woman who decides first to stop eating meat, then to stop eating completely. The Vegetarian poses complex questions about suffering and complicity. Along the way, the effects of Korea's patriarchal society play out in the often-abusive actions of Yeong-hye's husband, brother-in-law and father. Despite its rapid economic growth, South Korea remains a deeply patriarchal and misogynistic country with a widespread culture of discrimination, harassment and violence against women in the workplace, in the home and online. Yoon exploited these gender wars during his 2022 campaign, running on a platform that denied that inequalities between the genders existed, and threatening to abolish the ministry of family and gender equality. It's no surprise that women have been at the forefront of protests against Yoon and martial law. Kang's third novel, We Do Not Part , interweaves the story of the Jeju uprising with the present-day story of Kyungha, a writer who travels from Seoul to Jeju island at the behest of her friend, Inseon. Hospitalised after an accident, Inseon sends Kyungha to care for her beloved pet bird. Once there, Kyungha embarks on a ghostly exploration of the island's violent past. In the fraught period between the Japanese occupation and the Korean war, the citizens of Jeju protested the division of the country. Police and soldiers adopted a scorched-earth campaign against anyone suspected of being involved with the Worker's party of Korea. An estimated 25,000-30,000 people died – one tenth of the island's population. The uprising and ensuing massacre weren't acknowledged by the government until President Kim Dae-jung commissioned an investigation in January 2000. The injustice and tragedy of these events cannot be expressed adequately. But even in the crushing bleakness of Kang's novels, hope sparks in the actions of ordinary people. As Yeong-hye sinks deeper into her illness in The Vegetarian, her sister In-hye cares for her. In Human Acts, the mother of slain teenager Dong-ho finds solace in her memory of him as a child, saying: 'Why are we walking in the dark, let's go over there, where the flowers are blooming.' The tender descriptions of birds in We Do Not Part remind us of both the fragility and strength of life. In Kang's work, hope and resilience dwell in our bond with others. This is how we go on 'living after all in this brief, violent world.' Jessica Widner is a lecturer in English and creative writing at the University of Strathclyde. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Three novels by Nobel winner Han Kang that explain the fragile nature of South Korea
Last year, South Korea made headlines around the world for two reasons. The first was writer Han Kang's celebrated Nobel prize for literature win in October; the second was far less positive. Late in the evening of December 3 2024, the country's President Yoon Suk Yeol unexpectedly declared martial law – the first time it had happened since the country became a democracy in 1987. Protestors and lawmakers rushed on to the streets to resist Yoon's decree, and martial law was annulled early the next morning at 1am. The ensuing chaos ended on January 26, with Yoon's arrest. Protests and counter protests continue and the constitutional court of South Korea is yet to deliver its ruling on Yoon's impeachement, leaving the country's political horizons uncertain. Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here. On December 6 2024, 54-year-old Kang appeared at a press conference at the Nobel Museum, in Stockholm. Her remarks on the unfolding events in South Korea were ultimately hopeful: 'I, too, watched as individuals tried to stop tanks with their bare hands, embraced armed soldiers to de-escalate, and stood firm against approaching troops … these moments revealed their courage and sincerity.' This contradiction, between acts of violence and those of love, lies at the heart of Kang's work. Her novels offer an important lens for understanding Korean history and politics, and explaining the grief and strength of the Korean people. In her Nobel lecture, Kang describes finding a photobook of the Gwangju massacre in her home, as a child. The discovery left her with lasting questions: 'How are humans this violent? And yet how is it that they can simultaneously stand opposite such overwhelming violence?' Yoon's recent act echoed military dictator Chun Doo Hwan's instigation of martial law 44 years earlier. On May 18 1980, the military brutally suppressed a university protest. But the people of Gwangju fought back, seizing weapons and forming a citizen's army that pushed the soldiers out of the town. For ten days, people held control of Gwangju, until the soldiers returned, killing students and workers with clubs, bayonets and guns. Those who were imprisoned were tortured; many bodies have never been recovered. Spanning 23 years, Human Acts tells the story of Gwangju from different perspectives, portraying not only the events of the uprising, but its afterlife in the bodies and minds of participants. For many South Korean citizens, the memory of military repression is still fresh in their minds and is what propelled them on to the streets last December. Kang's best-known novel in the UK, The Vegetarian, also uses multiple viewpoints to tell the story of Yeong-hye, a woman who decides first to stop eating meat, then to stop eating completely. The Vegetarian poses complex questions about suffering and complicity. Along the way, the effects of Korea's patriarchal society play out in the often-abusive actions of Yeong-hye's husband, brother-in-law and father. Despite its rapid economic growth, South Korea remains a deeply patriarchal and misogynistic country with a widespread culture of discrimination, harassment and violence against women in the workplace, the home and online. Yoon exploited these gender wars during his 2022 campaign, running on a platform that denied that inequalities between the genders existed, and threatening to abolish the ministry of family and gender equality. It's no surprise that women have been at the forefront of protests against Yoon and martial law. Kang's third novel interweaves the story of the Jeju uprising with the present-day story of Kyungha, a writer who travels from Seoul to Jeju island at the behest of her friend, Inseon. Hospitalised after an accident, Inseon sends Kyungha to care for her beloved pet bird. Once there, Kyungha embarks on a ghostly exploration of the island's violent past. In the fraught period between the Japanese occupation and the Korean war, the citizens of Jeju protested the division of the country. Police and soldiers adopted a scorched-earth campaign against anyone suspected of being involved with the Worker's party of Korea. An estimated 25,000-30,000 people died – one tenth of the island's population. The uprising and ensuing massacre wasn't acknowledged by the government until President Kim Dae-jung commissioned an investigation in January 2000. The injustice and tragedy of these events cannot adequately be expressed. But even in the crushing bleakness of Kang's novels, hope sparks in the actions of ordinary people. As Yeong-hye sinks deeper into her illness in The Vegetarian, her sister In-hye cares for her. In Human Acts, the mother of slain teenager Dong-ho finds solace in her memory of him as a child, saying: 'Why are we walking in the dark, let's go over there, where the flowers are blooming.' The tender descriptions of birds in We Do Not Part remind us of both the fragility and strength of life. In Kang's work, hope and resilience dwell in our bond with others. This is how we go on 'living after all in this brief, violent world'. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Jessica Widner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Guardian
09-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
We Do Not Part by Han Kang review – a harrowing journey into South Korea's bloody history
When Han Kang published her International Booker-winning The Vegetarian (2015), translated by Deborah Smith, about a South Korean housewife who gives up meat and wants to become a tree, the novel slotted into a wave of English-language fiction about female appetites and male control. But the books that came next were harder to pin down. After Human Acts, about the 1980 massacre of student protesters in Han's native Gwangju, came The White Book, in which a Han-like novelist reflects on the death of her baby sister while musing on wartime Warsaw. Then came 2023's Greek Lessons, riddling to the point of opacity, about a divorced poet's inability to communicate. We Do Not Part, Han's first novel to be translated since winning the Nobel prize for literature last year, has elements of all these books. Stark as well as ethereal, chronologically discontinuous, full of nested narratives – often structured as remembered conversations about remembered conversations – it exhumes historical horror but also swerves into hallucinatory magic realism without breaking the plausibly autofictional frame with which it begins. Our narrator is the Seoul-based author Kyungha, whose life has gone off the rails after publishing a novel that sounds a lot like Human Acts (it's about 'a massacre at G–'). Even watching passersby is traumatic, reminding her of life's fragility ('The flesh, organs, bones, breaths passing before my eyes all held within them the potential to snap, to cease – so easily, and by a single decision'). She can't shake the memory of the survivors she wrote about, putting herself in the place of mothers who sheltered from gunfire with their children in a well. 'In retrospect it baffles me. Having decided to write about mass killings and torture, how could I have so naively – brazenly – hoped to soon shirk off the agony of it, to so easily be bereft of its traces?' This is all happening at an unspecified point in the recent near-present. Kyungha, having previously held down a job to support her family, now doesn't have to – not only because her daughter's no longer a child, but also because of some coyly hinted-at domestic rift in the wake of her breakdown. She's struggling to think of anyone she can name in her will – a symbol of her predicament – when out of the blue comes a text from Inseon, an old colleague from her journalism days. A visual artist living alone on Jeju Island, about 300 miles away, she's now in hospital in Seoul after an accident at her studio, and she needs Kyungha to go and take care of her abandoned pet bird – a request Kyungha accepts, despite the hazardous snowbound trek it entails. Thus does the novel's musing give way to a quixotic rescue mission ('Inseon had told me that to save her I had to get her water within the day. But when does the day end for a bird?'), shifting in tone yet further once Kyungha arrives only to find Inseon – or a vision of her – already there, and ready this time to elaborate on the horror that their previous conversations only circled: the state's mass murder of civilians in Jeju during anti-communist violence in the late 1940s, prior to the Korean war, a bloody history that scarred Inseon's family, not least her late mother, whom she nursed through dementia. The harrowing testimonies she presents Kyungha ultimately constitute We Do Not Part's main business. In contrast to Human Acts, the stories of violence don't come to us via narratorial recreation, exactly; they instead emerge solely from quotation in the form of interviews with the eyewitnesses and relatives whose accounts Kyungha hears from Inseon and then passes to us – a storytelling technique that, while no less a performance on Han's part, gives the impression of being less presumptuous, more ethically scrupulous. When Han won the Nobel, she said she couldn't celebrate amid war in Gaza and Ukraine. John Banville puckishly responded by saying the committee should take back the award, but it would be hard to read We Do Not Part and not think her words heartfelt. Even at its most seemingly inessential – witness the repeated lingering descriptions of snowflakes – the book insists quietly on the necessity to pay attention, to never turn away, to look, to see. As a message, it risks appearing somewhat frictionless, even self-serving, offering reward without cost, but it's worth remembering how this strange and unsettling novel begins: with the nightmare-haunted protagonist, alone. We Do Not Part by Han Kang is published by Hamish Hamilton (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
