Han Kang makes Man Booker Prize list with 'The Vegetarian'

“I felt composed and happy as I was nominated with writers that I like.”

A Korean novelist Han Kang (aged 46) said with bashful smile on Friday (local time) at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles where Paris Book Fair is held. Above is her answer when asked for a few words as she became the nominees for the first time as Korean for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize that is one of the three world literature prizes along with the Nobel Prize in Literature and Goncourt Prize of France.

Her book “The Vegetarian” tells the story about a woman who shuns eating meats after she had seen a dog that bit her and was cruelly killed, and believes that she is turning into a tree. When asked about the reaction of her father, Han Seung-won (aged 77) who is also a novelist, she just smiled and didn’t give the answer.

She gave much of the credit to a British translator. Deborah Smith voluntarily translated some 20 pages of her book and sent it to Portobello Books, a renowned publisher in the U.K., who recognized the book’s literary value and conclude a contract with Han.

“Culture can never overcome a language barrier but translation help overcome that barrier. It’s amazing to see how translation works.”

When she was told that The Vegetarian is the best selling among Korean books in Gibert Joseph, a representative bookstore in France, her eyes widened with surprise.

“I didn’t know that. It’s amazing. My story pushes the concerns over human being’s existence to the extreme but French readers seem to see it as a kind of fable.”

Her other books, “The wind is blowing” and “The boy is coming” have been translated into French, too. An hour-long autograph event held on the day was continuously visited by readers of her book. “I read an article that introduces Korean literature. That’s how I knew “The Vegetarian.” I liked the title which intrigued my curiosity,” a French woman said while she got her autograph. There was a man who bought the book for her wife.

Han plans to publish a new novel that is combined with an essay in June. The title of the book hasn’t been decided yet.

“It’s about the life, death and cities. And there’s a woman in it who makes steps forward. I stayed in Warsaw, Poland in 2014 for four month and the story took place in Seoul and Warsaw.”

The new novel will be introduced in the U.K. next year.

By the end of this year or early next year, she plans to complete the sequels of her book “While a snowflake is melting,” which was published last year.

“When I write every day, I ask myself if I could finish the story. All I think about now is that I want to finish the one for a quarterly article due on next month,” she said with smiling.

파리=손효림기자 aryssong@donga.com