South Korean author Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize on Monday, sharing the £50,000 ($72,000) award with her translator -- who had only taught herself Korean three years before.Han Kang, 45, an author and creative writing teacher who is already successful in South Korea, is likely to enjoy a spike in international sales following the win for
The Vegetarian."I'm so honoured" she told AFP. "The work features a protagonist who wants to become a plant, and to leave the human race to save herself from the dark side of human nature. "Through this extreme narrative I felt I could question... the difficult question of being human."She was the first South Korean to win the prize.Described as "lyrical and lacerating" by chairman of the judges Boyd Tonkin, the tale traces the story of an ordinary woman's rejection of convention from three different perspectives. It was picked unanimously by the panel of five judges, beating six other novels including
The Story of the Lost Child by Italian sensation Elena Ferrante and
A Strangeness in My Mind by Turkey's Orhan Pamuk.
South Korean author Han Kang and translator Deborah Smith (left)"This is a book of tenderness and terror," Boyd told guests at the award ceremony dinner at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.Han Kang's first book to appear in English,
The Vegetarian was described by newspaper
The Guardian as a shock to the system."Across the three parts, we are pressed up against a society's most inflexible structures -- expectations of behaviour, the workings of institutions -- and we watch them fail one by one," Daniel Hahn wrote in a review.
'Climbing a mountain' For the first time this year, the award went jointly to the translator, Deborah Smith, 28, who only started learning Korean three years before she embarked on the translation."This was the first book that I ever translated, and the best possible thing that can happen to a translator has just happened to me," an emotional Smith told AFP. "When I was 22 I decided to teach myself Korean... I felt that I was limited by only being able to speak English. I'd always read a lot of translations, and you get the sense of this whole world being out there, very different perspectives, different stories," she said."It felt as thought I looked up almost every other word in the dictionary. It felt a bit like climbing a mountain. But at the same time just falling into this world that was so atmospheric and disturbing and moving -- it was a wonderful experience." The international edition of Britaintarget="_blank"'>