The vital role of small publishing presses

The winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature should draw our attention to the often-forgotten power of marginal publishing outlets in the Global South. As The Guardian put it, Han Kang’s Nobel win was ‘a triumph not only for Korean literature but also a reminder of the huge reach and influence of small press publishing’.

This is not just about romanticising the little over the might of the mainstream against whom it is fashionable to take populist swipes. Neither is it only about literary production. And Kang [pictured above], an author based in one of the world’s richest countries, might seem an unusual example for a kind of aspirational excitement about the global little. But, given the uneven distribution of symbolic and material capital on the world stage, her Global South location links her to the inspirational glimmers of our successful little.

Kang’s writing career was born, nurtured and matured in the shadowy world of small ephemeral publishing networks. Her first novel, The Vegetarian, was initially mediated through a network of indie publishers before its 2015 English translation – itself published by an indie house, the now defunct Portobello Books – won the Booker Prize that year, bringing international attention to the author.

That she soon charmed the Swedish Academy is both fascinating and instructive. By acknowledging Kang’s work, the very pinnacle of literary validation and acclaim recognises, perhaps unconsciously and indirectly, the blinding effect of the disproportionate flow of global capital, especially relating to knowledge production and cultural exchange, and puts a spotlight on what can be done about it. This might help us highlight the valuable, extractible learnings from the little manoeuvres of knowledge creation and content curation that manage, incredibly, to emerge in developing regions.

*Deus Kansiime is a Gates Cambridge Scholar doing a PhD in English. Read his full blog here.