Han Kang's Rebel Fairies: The Nobel Prize Winner Who Conjures the Fear of Storms

On a rainy August day in 2000, Han Kang, the first Korean writer to win the Nobel Prize , gave birth to her son. And that's when the seed of her first children's story began to germinate. Illustrated by Jin Tae-ram, the book "Thunder Fairy, Lightning Fairy" was published in Korea in 2007 and appeared in bookstores alongside "The Vegetarian."

Her disturbing allegory about the body, desire, and resistance was translated into English in 2015, and a year later she received the International Booker Prize, definitively establishing herself on the global literary scene. The Swedish Academy reinforced this presence by awarding her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2024.

This boost has also prompted renewed attention to her work in Spain: last April, Lumen published her collection of poems 'Guardé el anochecer en el cajón' (I Guarded the Dusk in the Drawer), where Han Kang confirms that her poetic voice is as powerful as the narrative that has turned her into a global literary phenomenon.

In this context, Reservoir Books is now bringing back 'Thunder Fairy, Lightning Fairy' . Spain becomes the third country to publish this children's book, after Korea and France (where Grasset launched it in May 2025), although all its international publishers are already planning its release.

For Han Kang, literature was always a refuge. "I moved many times as a child, and I also changed schools many times. When you move, it takes time to make friends. It took me about a month. During that time, I would come home and feel protected by books . For me, they were my constant friends ," she confessed in the Swedish Academy interview after receiving the Nobel Prize. Perhaps that's why "Thunder Fairy, Lightning Fairy" also speaks of protection . Storms can be very frightening to children, but this fable encourages them to leave them behind and give them another meaning.

In this album, Han Kang aligns herself with the Korean tradition of combining elements of folklore with educational messages in her children's literature. In a cloudy sky, two little fairies weave the rain day after day. But they are tired of the outfits that tangle around their ankles and the braids that tug at their necks. One day, they decide to strip off and run through the clouds, leaving their duties behind, and, with this exploration, they turn rainy days into magical ones.

The Nobel Prize winner is a great advocate for reading from an early age. "It allows you to enter into the depths of another human being. It's a very direct way of entering other hearts or souls. By entering and exiting and returning to yourself again and again, through that process, your boundaries become more flexible. This way you can be more open and mature . It's very important," she confessed in the aforementioned interview.