Lost for Words: Reading Nobel Prize Winner Han Kang

There seems to be nothing connecting Han Kang and Brandon Sanderson. Han Kang is a Korean woman, an author of acclaimed prose, who has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She had earlier been awarded the Man Booker Prize (2016) for “The Vegetarian” – the first novel in Korean to be granted the distinction.

Sanderson, in turn, is an American fantasy author recently known for breaking a record in crowdfunding for novels. In 2022, Sanderson announced that during the pandemic, having more time to spend at home, he had written five novel manuscripts. He thus asked his readers to crowdfund the publishing of four of them, even though he hardly revealed anything about their contents. The result was a crowdfunding record for books – $41.7 million on Kickstarter.

I found it immensely heartening that people could support publishing books so much. Similarly, I find it heartening that Han Kang, a Korean and a woman, has been awarded the Nobel Prize.

Sanderson is by far the more popular, better-selling author among the two, while Han Kang is the critically acclaimed one. Sanderson’s quick-paced, well-plotted novels may one day be turned into blockbuster movies or TV series. Han Kang’s books will surely be discussed in literature classes if they aren’t already. Han Kang’s story-telling is simple but her style is elaborate – the reverse is true for Sanderson. And, being a lay reader without a degree in literature, I am a fan of both, but for completely different reasons.

At the same time, there is something that connects them – something I dislike about the prose of both.

I am a fan of Sanderson’s writing classes (which can be found on YouTube). And yet, when I read one of the four “secret” novels he published as a result of the crowdfunding campaign, I was immensely disappointed. “Yumi and the Nightmare Painter” is, as usual for Sanderson, a book with a well-built world, and a coherent, quick, gripping plot. But the author’s insistence on explaining everything to the reader – and this included the narrator adding his explanations in parentheses! – destroyed the joy for me. Everything was shoveled into the reader’s brain, as we would put it in Polish. This time, Sanderson broke the writing rules he so lucidly laid out in his lectures – including one of the core mantras of fiction writing: “Show, don’t tell.”

And even though critics may find this assessment bizarre, the more I read Han Kang, the more I have to say about her prose. I enjoy the style and the premise, but I don’t like how her books lay everything out before me, not leaving much to be interpreted. Strong, beautiful images, but there are no layers to them.

Of the three novels by Han Kang I have read – “The Vegetarian,” “Greek Lessons,” and “The White Book” – I recommend the last one least. I am still uncertain if I would recommend “Greek Lessons” more than “The Vegetarian,” or less. This is because I read the latter eight years ago and, honestly, I only remember its general contours – I just can’t compare the two works in a fair manner. (For my impressions from “The Vegetarian,” from the time just after I read it, one can find my 2016 article at the Diplomat’s website: “The Vegetarian: A Delicate Song of Blood.”)

Loss is a pervading theme of Hang Kang’s writing. “The Vegetarian” was about renouncing violence and thus, in a way, it was about renouncing the world (because can there be a world without violence?). And so, in a way, it was a book about a self-inflicted loss of the world. “The White Book” deals with a loss that had already happened (including the loss of a sister who died before the narrator’s birth). “The Greek Lessons” is about a loss that is gradually taking place.

“The White Book” doesn’t have a plot; it reads like a collection of impressions and thoughts, or a collection of poems. The book is strung together by references to the white color – nearly every chapter is named after a white object (whiteness being a symbol of loss, I assume). It doesn’t “read well,” for there is no story. It’s like visiting a gallery of paintings – you may gaze at one without seeing the others.

“Greek Lessons,” in turn, is about two characters, one of whom is gradually losing their eyesight, while the other is losing speech. In a way, this is a semblance of a story, though, again, the focus is on thoughts and impressions. What links the two protagonists are the classic Greek classes  – one is the teacher; the other, a student. And thus, ancient Greek – a language that died – is what the characters will become: lost.

The Korean student, who had already lost the ability to speak, is studying it to, as we learn at some point in the novel, “reclaim a language of her own volition.” Thank you, dear author, although perhaps this is not something that we as readers wanted to be laid out before us, since you have already showed it anyway.

But this brings me back to the issue of Han Kang’s language, which I consider the author’s strongest asset. As usual, kudos to the Korean writer’s translator to English, Deborah Smith, who reportedly had mastered Korean in just three years before first translating “The Vegetarian” (and kudos to Emily Yea Won, who co-translated “Greek Lessons” with Smith).

Let’s just sample this: “she walked weightless.” Or “the darkness that flickers and wavers behind his eyelids.” Or this:

The first thing I perceive is time. I sense it as a slow, cruel current of enormous mass passing constantly through my body to gradually overcome me.

This is both strong and yet so simple – everything is laid out before me. The protagonist’s feelings and experiences are similarly both shown and explained to us across Han Kang’s prose.

I am lost for words in front of the beauty of this style – but there are no words lost here, nothing to be added by the reader. Dear Han Kang, the more I read you, the more I need stories in your prose, and the less I need straightforwardness. But you gave me the expression “falling in love is like being haunted,” so how can I not admire your style?