The recent news that Korean author Han Kang has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature made me prick up my ears. Next month, I’ll embark on a research project that looks at how readers around the world respond to four so-called ‘global novels’. These can be regarded as books which achieve widespread critical acclaim and large readerships outside their home countries. Think of the works of Elena Ferrante, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Haruki Murakami. And now, add to the list Han Kang.
These books might be popular, but they’re also often controversial. According to some critics, novels that “go global” lack local specificity: by trying to appeal to readers across the world, they cut down on the kind of rich detail and locally-relevant themes that only readers more familiar with their milieu can appreciate. Or, even worse, they might exoticise this difference, playing up stereotypes for outsiders. Add controversies about translation and the linguistic dominance of English into the mix, and you’ve got a potent combination of concerns.
Han Kang’s best-known novel, The Vegetarian, embodies many of these debates. When it won the International Man Booker Prize in 2016, its translator (who was jointly awarded the prize with Kang) was accused of turning its spare, modern prose into language reminiscent of a 19th century Victorian novel.
And there’s another linguistic controversy brewing closer to home, as a Dutch author is shortlisted for the Booker Prize for the first time. To be in the running, Yael van der Wouden had to write The Safekeep in English, although it is set in 1960s Overijssel. Van der Wouden has explicitly said that she took “a Dutch story and wrote it for others”.
We have a lot of polarising think pieces on the subject, but what we don’t have yet is a systematic grasp of how real readers both inside and outside the countries depicted experience these novels. Are they aware of these controversies? How do they understand places and communities that they might experience only through the pages of a novel? I’m excited to find out…and I have a suspicion that it’s more complicated than we think.
Elsje Fourie, Associate Professor of Globalisation & Development