Hwang Sok-yong’s ‘Mater 2-10’ shortlisted for International Booker Prize

Hwang Sok-yong’s full-length story “Mater 2-10” made the final list of the 2024 International Booker Prize. Booker is one of the world’s top three literary awards, along with the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Prix Goncourt.

The Booker Prize committee nominated the six finalists including “Mater 2-10” on Tuesday (local time). Hwang’s novel, published in 2020, portrays the life stories of the families of rail workers to look back at the country’s modern history from the Japanese colonial era to the present.

In an interview released last Friday on the Booker Prize’s website after Hwang was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024, he said, "'Mater 2-10’ was an effort on my part to recover the vestige of the lives and struggles of ‘modern industrial workers,’ who are among the most neglected figures, largely left out of post-colonial Korean literature.” Asked how it felt to be nominated this year, he answered, “I’ve been nominated for international literary awards a dozen times over the past 20 years, but I’ve never made it as far as winning the actual award. I figured this time would be the same.” However, he said that he was excited about the news because he felt that he would have little time left, and he was strongly attached to this novel on which he had worked during the pandemic, adding, “It would give me the fuel I need to complete the next three novels that I’ve been planning to write.”

South Korean writers have reached the final round of the Booker Prize for three years running since Chung Bo-ra’s “Cursed Bunny” was nominated in 2022, followed by Cheon Myeong-Kwan’s “Whale” last year and Hwang’s novel this year. Back in 2016, Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” became the first South Korean literary work to win the Booker Prize. The final winner of this year’s International Booker Prize will be announced at an award ceremony scheduled on May 21 in London. Fifty thousand pounds worth of prize money is presented to the winning writer and the translator each.


Min Kim kimmin@donga.com