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Book Han Kang Wins Man Booker International Prize for Fiction With ‘The Vegetarian’
2016.05.18 04:07
for Fiction With ‘The Vegetarian’   The South Korean novelist Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction on Tuesday for her surreal, unsettling novel, “The Vegetarian,” about a woman who believes she is turning into a tree.Widely praised by critics in the United States and Britain, “The Vegetarian” is Ms. Han’s first work to be translated into English. It was selected by a panel of five judges, who considered 155 novels in translation, and chosen over novels by more established writers, including Elena Ferrante’s “The Story of the Lost Child” and the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk’s “A Strangeness in My Mind.”The prize, which is awarded jointly by Booker Prize Foundation and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, honors a single work that has been translated into English. The writer and translator share a cash prize of 50,000 British pounds, or about $72,000.Ms. Han, a celebrated writer who has been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades, was almost entirely unknown to English-speakers when “The Vegetarian” was published by Portobello Books in 2015. (It was released in the United States earlier this year, by Hogarth.) The novel had an unusual path to publication. Deborah Smith, a 28-year-old British translator, read a Korean edition of “The Vegetarian” about four years ago when she was studying for her Ph.D., and decided to send a sample translation to a British publisher, who was won over by the first 10 pages. The novel, which unfolds in three parts, centers on a depressed South Korean housewife named Yeong-hye, whose violent nightmares lead her to stop eating meat. Her husband and father view her vegetarianism as a subversive act, while her brother-in-law becomes sexually fixated with her plant-shaped birthmark. Yeong-hye begins starving herself, believing that she can photosynthesize light and transform herself into a tree. In an interview with The New York Times earlier this year, Ms. Han said the novel grew partly out of her fascination with the Gwangju uprising in 1980, when pro-democracy demonstrations turned bloody after government troops attacked protesters. Though she was just 9 at the time, the event profoundly shaped her understanding of the human capacity for violence but also for self-sacrifice and compassion, she said. With “The Vegetarian,” she aimed to explore what it would mean for a person to live a completely nonviolent life, by eschewing food. The novel, which grew out of a short story she wrote around 1998, was inspired in part by a line from the Korean poet Yi Sang, who wrote, “I believe that humans should be plants.”Ms. Han said, “I was thinking about the spectrum of human behavior, from sublimity to horror, and wondered, is it really possible for humans to live a perfectly innocent life in this violent world, and what would happen if someone tried to achieve that?” By ALEXANDRA ALTERMAY 17, 2016,NY Times |
Comment 3
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황규정*65
2016.05.18 04:24
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황규정*65
2016.05.18 04:36
작가 한강(45)은 소설가 한승원의 딸이며 그녀의 내력을 보실려면 아래를 클릭 하세요. 규정 -
황규정*65
2016.05.24 03:28
미국에서 맨부커 수상후 귀국한 작가 한강과의 인터뷰 내용입니다. 규정
한강 "맨부커상 수상 몰랐다…지하철 타고왔는데 아무 일도 안생겨"
한국인 최초로 세계적인 문학상 ‘맨부커 인터내셔널’상을 받은 소설가 한강이 24일 열린 기자간담회에
참석해 “수상을 할 거라고는 전혀 생각하지 않고 편안한 마음으로 갔다”며 “먼저 감사하다는 말씀을
드린다”고 말했다.
19일 오전 조용히 귀국해 집에서 휴식을 취하던 그는 이날 수상 후 처음으로 국내 언론과 만나 그간의
감회와 앞으로의 계획 등을 밝혔다.
한강은 “상을 받고 나서 여러분이 많이 기뻐해 주시고, 고맙다고 해주신 분들도 계셔서 그 마음이 어떤
마음인지를 헤아려 보려고 많이 생각을 하게 되는 1주일이지나갔다”고 했다.
수상 당시를 돌이키며 “시차 때문에 거의 눈을 뜰 수 없을 정도로 졸린 상태였다.별로 현실감 없는 상태로
상을 받은 것 같고 다행히 발표 나기 직전에 커피 한 잔을 마셔서 무사히 그날을 마무리했다”고 말했다.
이어 “당시 제 마음이 담담했던 가장 큰 이유는 책을 쓴 지 오래돼서 그런 것 같다”며 “11년 전 소설이라
그렇게 많은 시간을 건너서 이렇게 먼 곳에서 상을 준다는 게 좋은의미로 이상하게 느껴졌달까, 기쁘다기
보다는 ‘참 이상하다’ 정도였다”고 덧붙였다.
수상 이후 전과 달라진 게 있는지 묻자 “잘 모르겠다. 여기 올 때 지하철을 타고 왔는데,아무 일도 생기지
않았다. 바라건대 아무 일 없이 예전처럼 잘 살고 싶다”고 답했다.
그는 “오늘 이 자리가 끝나면 얼른 돌아가서 지금 쓰는 작업을 하고 싶다”며 “지금까지 그래 온 것처럼 글을
써가면서 책의 형태로 여러분께 드리고 싶다. 최대한 빨리 제 방에 숨어서 글을 쓰는 게 가장 좋은 방법이라
고 생각한다”고 말했다.
Copyright ⓒ 조선일보 & Chosun.com
Korean writer,Han Kang was recognized as the winner of Man Booker International Prize for Fiction with 'The Vegetarian'
I am not familiar with this award,but my daughter mentioned that this award is prestigious as Pulitzer Prize and also it
was real amazing that she beat such writers as Elena Ferrante and Nobel Prize winner,Turkish writer,Orhan Pamuk.
We are extremely proud of her amazing achievement. KJ
PS, The lady beside of Han Kang in above picture is Doborah Smith(28),translater.