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Han, 53, began her career with a group of poems in a South Korean magazine before making her prose debut in 1995 with a collection of short stories.

She later began writing longer prose works, most notably “The Vegetarian,” one of her first books translated into English. The novel, which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, chronicles a young woman’s attempt to live a more “vegetal” existence after suffering macabre nightmares about human cruelty.

Han is the first South Korean author to win the literature prize, and only the 18th woman of the 117 awards since 1901.

Much of Han’s work asks the question, voiced by a character in her 2019 novel “Europa,” whose protagonist is tormented by nightmares: “If you could live as you wish, what would you do with your life?”

Although many of Han’s protagonists are women, her prose works are often told from the perspective of men.

“Before my wife became a vegetarian, I had always thought of her as someone completely inconsequential in every way,” she begins her novel “The Vegetarian.” “However, if there was no special attraction, there was no particular drawback, and so there was no reason for the two of us not to marry.”

Originally written and published in Korean, “The Vegetarian” was translated by Deborah Smith, then 28. Smith, by her own admission, was “monolingual until she was 21,” only opting for Korean because of a lack of English-Korean translators.

The Swedish Academy praised Han’s work for its “unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead.” Through her “poetic and experimental style,” the Academy said, Han “has become an innovator of contemporary prose.”

Anna-Karin Palm, a member of the Nobel Committee for Literature, said readers unfamiliar with Han's work should start with "Human Acts," a 2014 novel that reflects on the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, when more than 100 civilians were killed during student-led pro-democracy protests in the South Korean city.

"Human Acts" shows how "the living and the dead are always intertwined and how these kinds of traumas stay with a population for generations," Palm said at Thursday's announcement ceremony.

But Han's "intense and lyrical" writing almost acts as a comfort in the face of this historical violence, Palm added. "Her prose, very tender and precise, almost becomes a counterpoint to the brutal noise of power," she said.

Before the announcement, Ellen Mattson, another committee member, detailed how the jury selects the laureate each year.

“We start with a very long list of about 220 names,” Mattson explained. “Then we have to wade through that huge mass of names – and that’s where we need help from experts from different parts of the world.”

In the end, the committee comes up with a collection of “about 20 names,” which is then narrowed down to a shortlist of five authors. “That’s where the real work begins,” Mattson explains.

Next, each committee member has to “read everything those five authors write” to begin to narrow down a single winner.

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