Han\u2019s novels, novellas, essays and short story collections have variously explored themes of patriarchy, violence, grief and humanity. Her 2007 novel The Vegetarian, which was translated into English in 2015 by Deborah Smith, won the International Booker prize in 2016.<\/p>\n

Han is the first South Korean author and 18th woman to win the prize. Her \u201cempathy for vulnerable, often female, lives is palpable, and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose,\u201d said Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee. She \u201chas a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose\u201d.<\/p>\n

Han was born in Gwangju, a city in the south-west of South Korea, in 1970. When she was 10, her family moved to the Suyu-dong neighbourhood of Seoul. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University in the capital.<\/p>\n

In 1993, Han made her literary debut with a series of five poems published in the Korean magazine Literature and Society. The following year, she won the Seoul Shinmun spring literary contest with a story, Red Anchor.<\/p>\n

Her first short story collection, Love of Yeosu, arrived in 1995. In 1998, she participated in the University of Iowa International Writing Program for three months, supported by Arts Council Korea.<\/p>\n