Han Kang’s Nobel win is testament to importance of small press publishing | Books | The Guardian

The announcement of the South Korean writer Han Kang as the 2024 Nobel Literature laureate is a triumph not only for Korean literature but also a reminder of the huge reach and influence of small press publishing, which takes on so much of the heavy work of introducing literature in translation to a wider audience.

Though Han's most recent work has been published in the UK by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, her first novel, The Vegetarian, published in South Korea in 2007, was published by the now defunct independent Portobello Books in 2015. It won the International Booker prize the following year.

Now Han's entire output has been honoured: works of spare, fierce prose, seemingly ethereal in transmission yet brutal in impact. While often abstract, they nevertheless powerfully wrestle with traditional Korean society and history.