Kyung-sook Shin has won the $30,000 Man Asian Literary Prize for her novel, Please Look After Mom. The South Korean novelist is the first woman to win the award.
Publishers nominated 90 books for the prize, and the final shortlist counted seven books. The Complete Review has more about the winning novel. Translator Chi-Young Kim also received US$5,000.
Here’s more from the release: “Please Look After Mom is a deeply moving story of a family’s search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon amid the crowds of the Seoul Station subway. It offers the reader an insight into traditional family life in contemporary South Korea and has already sold 1.93m copies in South Korea alone – a country with a population of just under 50m people. Following the shortlisting, the novel is now set to be published in 32 countries.” (Author photo via Lee Byungryul)