This year I didn’t have a contest to name the winners of the two prizes above, for nobody ever wins. And, indeed, I’m not sure if these awards were all that predictable, though Literature Laureate Han Kang did win a Booker Prize for international fiction. So, here we go:
The Peace Prize was awarded this morning to an organization: the Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo. short for Nihon gensuibaku higaisha dantai kyōgi-kai (日本原水爆被害者団体協議会), or The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, started in 1956. The press release says this:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 to the Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo. This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.
In response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945, a global movement arose whose members have worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of using nuclear weapons. Gradually, a powerful international norm developed, stigmatising the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable. This norm has become known as “the nuclear taboo”.
The testimony of the Hibakusha – the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – is unique in this larger context.
These historical witnesses have helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world by drawing on personal stories, creating educational campaigns based on their own experience, and issuing urgent warnings against the spread and use of nuclear weapons. The Hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.
They are of course on a mission from Ceiling Cat, and I wish we’d just have worldwide disarmament. With a bunch of rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea getting the bomb, it’s only a matter of time before some demented leader decides to use it. But I am grateful that a worthy organization got it; I was a bit afraid because I heard that UNRWA was nominated. (Remember that Henry Kissinger shared that prize a while back.)
Here’s the announcement (the awardees are told in advance, but cannot share the news until the announcement).
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And. . . . the literature prize, which this year went to Korean writer Han Kang, who’s only 53.
The press release is very short, just says this:
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024 is awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang,
“for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.
I had never heard of her, but Wikipedia fills out her literary biography:
She is best known for the novel The Vegetarian, which traces a woman’s mental illness and neglect from her family. In 2016, in its English translation, it was the first Korean language novel to win the International Booker Prize for fiction. In 2024, Han became the first Korean writer and the first Asian woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
. . . . .The Vegetarian was Han’s first novel translated into English, although she had already attracted worldwide attention by the time Deborah Smith translated it. There has been some controversy over the translation, as scholars have detected mistakes in it; among other things, there is concern that Smith attributed some of the dialogue to the wrong characters. The translated work won the International Booker Prize 2016 for both Han and Smith. Han was the first Korean to be nominated for the award, and, in its English translation, it was the first Korean language novel to win the International Booker Prize for fiction. The Vegetarian was also chosen as one of “The 10 Best Books of 2016” by The New York Times Book Review.
. . .The Vegetarian made it to place 49th in The New York Times‘s “100 Best Books of the 21st century” in July 2024.
If you want that NYT “21st century” list to find reading material, the archived link is here. I have read seven of the top ten books, but not #1 (My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante). More from the entry:
Han’s third novel, The White Book, was shortlisted for the 2018 International Booker Prize.
Han’s novel Human Acts was released in January 2016 by Portobello Books. Han received the Premio Malaparte for the Italian translation of Human Acts, Atti Umani, by Adelphi Edizioni, in Italy on 1 October 2017. Her 2017 autobiographical novel The White Book centers on the loss of her older sister, a baby who died two hours after her birth.[18]
Han’s novel We Do Not Part was published in 2021. It tells the story of a writer researching the 1948–49 Jeju uprising and its impact on her friend’s family. The French translation of the novel won the Prix Médicis Étranger in 2023.
In 2023, Han’s fourth full-length novel, Greek Lessons, was translated into English. The Atlantic called it a book in which “words are both insufficient and too powerful to tame”
You can order the book from Amazon by clicking on the cover below (I’ve already requested it via interlibrary loan, as I have no more room for books):
And the announcement, which gives a bit more about the reasons she won the prize:
Here’s an interview with the new Laureate:
Nobody ever wins??!! I got the autographed WEIT to show for last year’s literature win 😁
oops. I forgot. . . .
No biggie! But thanks again for the book!
Dynamite choice from Stockholm.
‘The Vegetarian’ is surreal, raw, potent. I read it shortly after it came out in English translation. I gather she’s interpreted as a ‘political’ writer, though I don’t recall this theme in the novella.
Incidentally, other Asian female writers who are promoted in the nebulous category of ‘Nobel prospects’, eg Japan’s Yoko Tawada ( see the review of Suggested in the Stars in the NYT Book review a couple of weeks ago ), and China’s Can Xue, favour plots ( or a lack thereof ) that are far more quirky-bizarre.
You have a stronger stomach than I have. I couldn’t wait to finish The Vegetarian. Almost as raw as Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, another Booker finalist which I hated. I certainly don’t go for treacly novels, but these two take unpleasantness to a unnecessary extreme😵💫
I’m reading “A Little Life” now and am mesmerized. Yes, it’s not for the weak at heart, but so far (I’m 350 pages in: about half) I really am absorbed.
The People in the Trees (inspired by the work of Gajdusek) and To Paradise (especially the last of the three parts) are also excellent.
I loved The People in the Trees. Much preferred it to A Little Life, which I thought veered into hagiography in its portrayal of the main protagonist. (Maybe that was the point. I dunno.)
Let me know how you feel about it at the end. I found the really ugly stuff too repetitive. I think I enjoyed the first bit.
“Dynamite”….clever
Excellent choice for peace prize it appears. Also 80 years since Holocaust. Never forget? Just like the Holocaust was real to us U.S. kids in the 1950’s, so were the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wonder if impact of nuclear weapons use is addressed in Gen Z’er K-12 curriculum. Thank Ceiling Cat (E) for Nihon Hidankyo.
Not that I am against their goals, but is there any evidence that their activity has actually had an impact on achieving or maintaining peace? Granted peace is thin on the ground these days, but sure the prize should do more than just recognize good intentions? Perhaps, not awarding a Peace Prize would be meaningful.
There has been progress, although it can’t be credited to disarmament activists, who are usually regarded as agents of the other side promoting unilateral disarmament by one’s own side. The fall of Soviet communism contributed enormously. It allowed substantial reductions in the risk of nuclear miscalculation. There are no longer nuclear weapons embarked on US Navy ships (other than the Trident submarines as the ultimate deterrent) and theatre/battlefield nuclear weapons are gone from Europe except for some gravity bombs stored in bunkers. NORAD no longer deploys nuclear anti-aircraft warheads on interceptor aircraft. (Remember the Genie?)
An effective anti-ballistic missile defence is inherently destabilizing because it signals to the enemy that you think you can neuter his retaliatory deterrent and are therefore surely planning to attack him with impunity. Yet aren’t we and Israel glad the United States went ahead and developed one anyway! (Granted Iran’s missiles are easier than those of a peer adversary would be but the defences have still performed superbly.) If Iran did develop nuclear warheads small enough to put on its missiles (< 1000 kg), it would have to face the fact that Israel would shoot them all down. Instead of “unthinkable” or “taboo”, nuclear war becomes impractical. My money is on impracticality to keep the peace.
Suppression of the nuclear ambitions of rogue states like Iran should be the focus of disarmament activists. The discomfort for the activists is that that goal probably requires more application of military force, possibly even nuclear, not less.
+1
So I think it is a good award; the publicity of this award should help them. With so much depravity in the leadership of nations today, it will take great luck not to have a launch. Late coach George Allen once said that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. Nihon Hidankyo is a bit of preparation; the worldwide publicity of this award is opportunity. Of course, I would feel more hopeful if the Israelis were to use its conventional weapons/software to neutralize Iran’s current efforts.
(Sorry….should have been a reply to DrB)
As Jerry mentioned, there was a report that UNRWA was a nominee for the Peace Prize. Maybe it’s just a rumor, but I doubt it. https://www.timesofisrael.com/unrwa-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize-amid-allegations-workers-took-part-in-oct-7/
Note that I do mention UNRWA in the post.
Too bad they won’t talk about all the chemical and biological weapons they dropped on China.
I don’t think this would be a good idea. Even without their help, Chinese propaganda overexposes these events so efficiently that Japanese mothers and children suffer stabbing attacks (one 10-yr-old boy fatally) for being Japanese.
It certainly was uplifting to listen to the interview with Han Kang after the depressing subjects of DEI into the NSF and the damn protesters at Columbia.