South Korean novelist first woman to win Man Asia Prize

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Novelist Kyung-sook Shin attends the award dinner on March 15. AFP photo

South Korean novelist Kyung-sook Shin has become the first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize, Asia’s most prestigious award for writers, for her novel “Please Look After Mom.”

The novelist attended a black-tie award dinner March 15 at the Conrad Hotel in Hong Kong to receive the prize of $30,000. The translator of the novel, Chi-Young Kim, also received $5,000. The win is the first for a South Korean writer, and “Please Look After Mom” is the first novel by a South Korean to make it to the Man Asian Literary Prize shortlist in the prize’s five-year history.

It is a deeply moving story of a family’s search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon among the crowd in the Seoul subway. It offers the reader an insight into traditional family life in contemporary South Korea, and has already sold more than one million copies in South Korea alone, a country with a population of just under 50 million people. The novel is now set to be published in 32 countries.

90 books were submitted for the Man Asia Prize in 2011, with a list of twelve being announced in October 2011 and an unprecedented shortlist of seven revealed in January.