Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel, “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday — the first writer from her country to receive the award.

周四，以超现实主义颠覆性小说《素食者》(The Vegetarian)而闻名的韩国作家韩江被授予诺贝尔文学奖，她是韩国首位获得该奖项的作家。

Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor for “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

该奖项主办方瑞典文学院的常务秘书马茨·马尔姆在斯德哥尔摩举行的新闻发布会上表示，获奖原因是“她以带着炽烈诗意的散文直面历史创伤，揭露人类生命的脆弱”。

“The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. It centers on a depressed housewife who shocks her family when she stops eating meat; later, she stops eating altogether and yearns to turn into a tree that can live off sunlight alone. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.”

《素食者》2007年在韩国出版，被翻译成英文后，该书获得了2016年国际布克奖。这本书讲述了一名抑郁的家庭主妇因停止吃肉震惊了家人的故事；后来她完全停止进食，渴望变成一株只靠阳光生活的树。波罗奇斯塔·卡普尔在为《纽约时报》撰写的书评中说，韩江“在韩国被誉为预言者，这不无道理”。

Han’s Nobel was a surprise. Before the announcement, the bookmakers’ favorite for this year’s award was Can Xue, an avant-garde Chinese writer of category-defying novels. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media, and greeted with fanfare in South Korea.

韩江获诺贝尔奖是一个惊喜。在获奖名单公布之前，博彩公司最看好的获奖者是以难以分类的小说见长的中国先锋作家残雪。但韩江获奖的消息在社交媒体上引起作家和书迷的欢呼，在韩国也受到了热烈的欢迎。

“This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol said in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han.

尹锡悦总统在声明中说：“这是韩国文学的伟大成就，也是举国欢庆的时刻。”他在声明中指出，韩江有能力捕捉韩国近代史上的痛苦片段。韩国流行乐队防弹少年团(BTS)的成员也进行了庆祝，其中一名成员在韩江的照片旁边加了一个哭脸和一颗心的表情。

Some in the country were astonished to learn a Korean writer had won. “I could not believe my eyes when I saw this news,” said Park Sang-in, an office worker in Seoul. “No one had told us that we had a strong candidate this year.”

在韩国国内，一些人惊讶地得知是一位韩国作家获奖。“看到这个消息时，我简直不敢相信自己的眼睛，”首尔的上班族朴相仁（音）说。“没有人告诉我们，今年我们有一个很有希望的候选人。”

At the same time, many saw it as an appropriate choice. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel, “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.

与此同时，许多人认为这是一个合适的选择。韩江的小说《不做告别》(We Do Not Part)将于明年1月在美国贺加斯出版社出版，她的翻译之一佩吉·阿尼亚·莫里斯说，韩江的开创性作品重塑了韩国的文学格局。

“Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.”

“韩江的作品激励了一代韩国作家，让他们在题材上更真实、更大胆，”莫里斯说。“一次又一次，她勇敢地面对审查和保全面子的文化，她每次都以更强大、更坚定的作品，挫败那些让她闭嘴的企图。”

韩江的英文译者之一佩吉·阿尼亚·莫里斯说，她的作品 “激励了一代韩国作家更加真实、更加大胆”。

Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.”

现年53岁的韩江于1970年出生于韩国光州。她的父亲也是一位小说家，但远没有她成功。一家人经济拮据，经常搬家。在2016年接受《纽约时报》采访时，韩江表示，她那短暂的成长期“对一个小孩子来说太艰难了，但我还好，因为我被书围绕着。”

When Han was 9, her family moved to Seoul just months before the Gwangju uprising, when government troops fired on crowds of pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds. The event shaped her views on humanity’s capacity for violence, Han said in the 2016 interview, and its specter has haunted her writing. In her 2014 novel “Human Acts,” a writer observes a police raid on a group of activists.

韩江九岁的时候，一家人搬到了首尔，几个月后发生了光州起义，政府军向支持民主的抗议者开枪，造成数以百计的人死亡。她在2016年的采访中说，这件事塑造了她对人类暴力能力的看法，它的幽灵一直困扰着她的写作。在她2014年的小说《少年来了》(Human Acts)中，一位作家目睹了警察对一群活动人士进行突查。

She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising.

她还回忆起看到人们排队为在起义中受伤的人献血的画面。

“It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”

“这就像两个无法解开的谜语，印在我的脑海里：人类怎么会如此残暴，人类又怎么会如此崇高？”她说。“当我写小说时，我发现自己总是回到身为人类意味着什么的主题上来。”

The novelist Hernan Diaz praised Han’s “unique ear for the rumors of history,” adding that she can “access the traumas that have shaped and bruised entire generations, and she does so without ever turning her novels into mere didactical tools.”

小说家赫尔南·迪亚兹称赞韩江“格外善于倾听历史的传闻”，并说，她可以“触及塑造和伤害了整整几代人的创伤，而且她从来没有把她的小说变成单纯的说教工具”。

Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. In the 2016 interview, Han said it was around that time that she developed the idea for a short story about a woman who becomes a plant, which she eventually developed into “The Vegetarian.”

韩江在延世大学学习文学，最早出版的作品是诗歌。她的处女作《玄鹿》(Black Deer)出版于1998年，讲述了一个失踪女子的神秘故事。在2016年的采访中，韩江说，大约在那个时候，她萌生了想法，要创作关于一个女人变成一株植物的短篇小说，她最终把这个故事写成了《素食者》。

Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023.

在处女作之后，她又写了七部长篇小说，以及几部中篇小说、散文集和短篇小说集。她的其他小说包括同样获得国际布克奖提名的《白》(The White Book)和2023年出版了英文版的《希腊语时间》(Greek Lessons)。

In “Greek Lessons,” a woman loses her ability to speak and tries to restore it by learning ancient Greek. Idra Novey, in a review for The Times, called the novel “a celebration of the ineffable trust to be found in sharing language.”

在《希腊语时间》中，一个女人失去了说话的能力，她试图通过学习古希腊语来恢复这种能力。伊德拉·诺维在为时报撰写的书评中称，这部小说“颂扬了可以在共享的语言中看到的那种难以形容的信任”。

“Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.”

“韩江是一个预言者，没有别的词可以形容，”韩江的北美出版商贺加斯的执行编辑帕里萨·易卜拉希米说，她指出，韩江的作品反映了“对女性内心生活的非凡洞察力”。

Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time, she said, and some of her books were initially greeted with bafflement. “The Vegetarian” was received as “very extreme and bizarre,” Han said.

她说，韩江的作品如今在韩国备受推崇，但这花了一些时间，她的一些书最初不被人理解。韩江说，《素食者》被认为“非常极端和怪异”。

She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages.

她在本国出版小说和诗歌20多年后才有了英文译本，当时黛博拉·史密斯翻译了《素食者》，只凭前10页就将它卖给了一家英国出版商。

When the English language edition was released to acclaim in 2016, “The Vegetarian” helped to drive a new wave of translations of more experimental fiction, including works by women with a feminist bent.

2016年，《素食者》英文版一经推出便广受好评，推动了翻译更具实验性的小说的新浪潮，其中包括具有女权主义倾向的女性作品。

“Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”

“她的作品、译本以及作品获得的成功促使对韩国文学的翻译变得更前卫、更实验、更大胆，”居住在首尔的韩语翻译和作家安东·胡尔说。“她改变了关于韩国文学的对话。”

Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.”

牛津大学文学教授安基·穆克吉说，近20年来，她“年复一年”地在课堂上教授韩江的作品。“她的作品始终带着政治性——无论是身体政治、性别政治，还是人与国家斗争的政治——但她的作品从未放弃文学想象力，”穆克吉说。“她的作品从来不是高高在上的，而是俏皮、有趣、超现实的。”

The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer, poet or playwright’s career. Past recipients have included Toni Morrison, Harold Pinter and, in 2016, Bob Dylan. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million.

诺贝尔奖是文学界的最高奖项，获得该奖是作家、诗人或剧作家事业的顶峰。过去的获奖者包括托尼·莫里森、哈罗德·品特和2016年的鲍勃·迪伦。除了能获得声望和销量的大幅提升，获奖者还能获得1100万瑞典克朗（约合100万美元）的奖金。

Although relatively young for Nobel laureate, Han is far older than Rudyard Kipling was when he accepted the 1907 award, at age 41.

虽然对于诺贝尔奖得主来说，韩江相对年轻，但她还是比1907年以41岁的年龄获奖的拉迪亚德·吉卜林要年长得多。

In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America.

近年来，由于女性或来自欧洲和北美以外地区的获奖者数量过少，文学院一直在努力增加诺贝尔文学奖候选人的多样性。

Since 2020, the academy has awarded the prize to one person of color — Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian writer whose novels dissect the legacy of colonialism — as well as two women: Louise Glück, the American poet, and Annie Ernaux, the French writer of autobiographical works.

自2020年以来，文学院将该奖授予了有色人种——坦桑尼亚作家阿卜杜勒拉扎克·古尔纳，他的小说剖析了殖民主义的遗留问题；以及两位女性——美国诗人路易丝·格吕克和法国自传体作家安妮·埃诺克。

Last year’s recipient was Jon Fosse, a Norwegian author and playwright whose novels, told in lengthy sentences, often contain religious undertones.

去年的获奖者是挪威作家兼剧作家乔恩·福瑟，他的小说以冗长的句子讲述，往往含有宗教色彩。

Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901.

韩江是第18位获得诺贝尔文学奖的女性，自1901年以来，诺贝尔文学奖已授予120位作家。

Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea. Yet in media and literary circles, older male writers have often been seen as the most likely contenders for the Nobel.

一些学者和翻译认为，韩国第一位获得诺贝尔文学奖的作家是女性，可以说是恰如其分。许多最具开创性和挑衅性的当代韩国文学都由女性小说家创作，其中一些作家挑战并揭露了厌女症，以及韩国女性所承受的负担。然而，在媒体和文学界，年长的男性作家往往被视为最有可能获得诺贝尔奖的竞争者。

“For years now, the conversation about how to get Korea its literature prize has not once seemed to seriously consider that the answer might be Han Kang, despite her massive success,” said Morris, who in addition to translating Han has translated work by Korean women like Pak Kyongni and Ji-min Lee. “So it’s a pleasant surprise and a bit of poetic justice to see a woman become the one to end Korea’s literature Nobel drought.”

莫里斯说：“多年来，关于如何让韩国获得文学奖的讨论似乎从来没有认真考虑过答案可能是韩江，尽管她取得了巨大的成功。”除了韩江之外，莫里斯还翻译了朴景利和李智敏等韩国女性的作品。“因此，看到一位女性成为结束韩国文学诺贝尔奖荒的人，这是一个惊喜，也是一种诗意的正义。”