The Nobel Prize in literature has long faced criticism for its focus on European and North American men. Han Kang, the first Asian woman to win, writes “intense lyrical prose that is both tender and brutal,

The honor, one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, went to the South Korean novelist for "her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas.

H AN 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.