This woman made me cry. She has won the nobel prize in literature

“When I write, I use my body.

I use all the sensory details of seeing, of smelling, of tasting, of experiencing tenderness & warmth and cold and pain. I notice my heart racing and my body needing of food & water, of walking & running, of feeling the wind and rain, of holding hands.

I try to infuse those vivid sensations that I feel as a mortal being with blood coursing through the body into my sentences as if I am sending out an electric current.“

Yesterday, I heard these words for the very first time on an Instagram reel. And, I started crying. I felt this sudden weight of all my unrealized dreams and potential. The voice just got to me.

These words were spoken by Han Kang, apparently she had won the nobel prize in literature in 2024. She is a poetess. Her career with poetry first. I guess that’s why she has honed her voice to be velvet like, designed for narration. So deep and nourishing.

Or maybe, that’s how she always sounded like. Calm. Composed. Full of sensitivity & emotional depth. Her words made me feel like I am not doing enough, not feeling enough to get more onto the page.

When I see her, I see a woman who has listened to her inner voice for years. She has practiced and fine tuned her craft, like I wanted to.

But I am not there yet. I guess the vision of what I could achieve vs what I am doing now & where I am at… hit me like a load of truck.

After watching the reel, I thought of exploring this person (Han Kang) & my feelings of inferiority a bit more:

I started watching her 34 min nobel prize lecture. She comes on the stage with no fast gestures. She sets her papers. Removes her specs. Smoothens her hair. And then she starts to speak.

As if by taking time in doing these actions, she is making everyone’s mind neurons mirror her calm & peace.

In situations like these, my mind starts to run like a chicken. I get a high pitched tone that rushes to speak the rehearsed lines. All my focus is on getting the script right. I see this when I shoot reels for the Instagram page of @tryhugsy

Anyways, let’s get back to Han and her writing. I will be sharing my notes from her lecture and the little anecdotes or commentary I have about them:

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Han wrote a poetry book when she was 8 years old. A book that’s unpublished, hiding in her shoebox. One of the poems she wrote in it:

Where is love?
It is inside my thump thumping breathing chest.

What is love?
It is the thread connecting between our hearts.

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Writing books take time & sacrifices:

My novels have taken my anywhere from a year to seven years to finish. For which I have exchanged considerable portions of my personal life.

When a woman talks about sacrificing her personal life. I don’t think that she is losing time with her friends or parents. I want to know if she is married or not? Does she has a kid or not?

Did this soulful woman choose to live alone?

The answer I got: She was married to a literary critic Hang Young Hee, but they have been divorced for many years. And she has a son. She and her husband ran a bookstore in Seoul.

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A very strong narrative of how Han writes her novels is QUESTIONS!

I’ll call this The Question Theory: the belief that your life’s work is not the answer you arrive at, but the question you refuse to leave.

Han spent three years on writing The Vegetarian, asking:

• Can a person be completely innocent?

• To what depths can we reject violence?

• What happens to someone who refuses to belong to the human species anymore? (They want to be a plant and survive on water)

Once her questions are answered, and the book is finished. Han becomes a changed person. She has new questions now. On top of her previous questions. Hence, she starts writing another book.

While writing her next book, the questions she had were:

• The world cannot reject violence.

• We cannot turn into plants. Then how do we continue?

Her questions are deeply rooted into how she as a person interacts with the world.

You just have to ask, what’s her POV? And, that’s the book.

• Why this world is so violent & painful and yet, how this world can be this beautiful?

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She is fucking dedicated to her craft.

I obtained a book containing more than 900 testimonials and read it cover to cover. 9 hours a day, for about a month.

Whatever happens in the future. I will remember this episode as the moment that shaped it.

Here’s the link to the complete lecture:.

Signing off
Akanksha