STOCKHOLM — South Korean author Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for a poetic and unsettling body of work that the Nobel committee said “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” A slow-burning literary success who was won multiple awards in Korea and Europe, Han is the first Asian woman and the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel literature prize. Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson praised Han’s “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters, in novels such as “The Vegetarian” and “Human Acts.” “She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead,” Olsson said. Nobel literature committee member Anna-Karin Palm said Han writes “intense lyrical prose that is both
