2016 Man Booker International Prize winner Han Kang featured in World Literature Today’s Summer issue

World Literature Today congratulates its May 2016 contributor and South Korean author Han Kang for winning the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards.

Han appears on WLT’s May 2016 cover, while inside is an exclusive interview with her in a special section on Asian writers. Han discusses how the reality of human violence influenced her while writing The Vegetarian, the novel that won this year’s Man Booker International Prize. She writes that her novel “depicts a woman who rejects. . . omnipresent and precarious violence even at a cost to herself.”  She adds that “eating meat, cooking meat, all these daily activities embody a [version of extreme] violence that has been normalized.” Han also presents in this issue her own list of leading contemporary Korean authors.

The Man Booker International Prize is given annually to a single book in English translation. Han will share the £50,000 prize equally with her translator Deborah Smith.

Han joins other Man Booker winners who have appeared in World Literature Today, including 2015 winner László Krasznahorkai and fellow 2016 nominees José Eduardo Agualusa, Elena Ferrante, Orhan Pamuk, and Yan Lianke. One of the judges for this year’s Man Booker Prize, Tahmima Anam, also appeared on May 2013 cover of World Literature Today.