The Nobel Prize in literature has long faced criticism for its focus on European and North American men. Han Kang, the first Asian woman to win, writes “intense lyrical prose that is both tender and brutal,

The honor, one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, went to the South Korean novelist for "her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas.

For some, Thursday's surprise announcement - Han had not been on any of the major lists of likely Nobel winners - fuelled hope that literature might get an injection of life in th