De Ce a Câștigat Han Kang Premiul Nobel?

This paper explores the relationship between literary awards, translation and the construction of the world literary canon. The author this paper has focused on is Han Kang and her 2024 Nobel Prize win. Starting from the premise that world literature is defined by circulation and translation, as theorized by David Damrosch, the study analyzes how institutional mediators like the Swedish Academy influence global literary visibility. The research employs a methodology that combines a close reading of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian with a comparative analysis of female Nobel laureates from the last decade. The central argument suggests that while the Nobel Prize has recently aimed to address historical imbalances regarding gender and geographical representation—increasingly favoring authors from the “Global South” or semi-peripheral cultures like South Korea—the selection process remains fundamentally conservative. By examining The Vegetarian through a feminist lens, the paper highlights how themes of social rebellion and resistance against patriarchal norms align with contemporary global social discourses. Ultimately, the study concludes that literary prizes function as powerful agents of consecration that both challenge and reproduce existing power dynamics within the transnational literary field.