Cheon Myeong-kwan's first full-length novel 'Whale' was originally published in Korean in 2004. Photo: The Booker Prizes
South Korean novelist Cheon Myeong-kwan's Whale has been shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize, one of the three most prestigious literary awards in the world.
The British prize was established in 2005 to honour an author and translator equally for a single work of fiction translated into English.
The novel, translated by Chi-young Kim and published by Europa Editions on Jan 19, was among six other works that made it to the shortlist, announced by the organiser on Tuesday.
Reflecting Korea's rapid changes
Cheon's story in Whale of an ambitious woman named Geum-bok, who goes from being a mountain village girl to a small-town entrepreneur, was among the 13 preliminary nominations that were announced on March 14.
The Booker Prize described the book as "an adventure-satire of epic proportions, which sheds new light on the changes Korea experienced in its rapid transition from pre-modern to post-modern society" on its website.
Cheon, a novelist, screenwriter and director whose work has been translated into eight languages, made his literary debut with Frank and I, a short story. His first full-length novel Whale, published in 2004, won the 10th Munhak Dongne New Writer Award.
The International Booker Prize 2023 shortlist includes works originating in six countries across four continents, two debuts – and a final novel. Photo: The Booker Prizes
He is the fifth Korean to be nominated for the International Booker Prize.
Bora Chung's Cursed Bunny and Park Sang-young’s Love In The Big City were nominated in 2022; Han Kang in 2016 and 2018; and Hwang Sok-yong in 2019. Han won the prize for The Vegetarian in 2016.
Works originating in six countries
This year’s other shortlisted books include Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated from French by Frank Wynne, Guadalupe Nettel’s Still Born, translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey, and The Gospel According To The New World by Maryse Conde, translated by her husband Richard Philcox.
Conde, who is 89, is now the oldest person to be nominated for the prize.
The list is rounded up by two translated books from languages that have never featured before in the prize: Eva Baltasar’s Boulder is translated by Julia Sanches from the original Catalan, while Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov is translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel.
The winning title is scheduled to be announced on May 23 in London.
The panel of International Booker Prize judges is chaired by the prize-winning French-Moroccan novelist, Leila Slimani. The panel also includes Uilleam Blacker, one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukrainian; Tan Twan Eng, the Booker-shortlisted Malaysian novelist; Parul Sehgal, staff writer and critic at the New Yorker; and Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times. – The Korea Herald/Asia New Network/The Booker Prizes
