July 09, 2026 08:55 am (IST)
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Korean Han Kang and British Deborah Smith win 2016 Man Booker International Prize
London, May 17 (IBNS) South Korean author Han Kang and British translator Deborah Smith shared the honours on Monday for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize for their book, The Vegetarian, media reported.
'The Vegetarian' is Kang's first novel, and translated from Korean to English by Deborah Smith.
The novel is about a woman who wants to reject human brutality and therefore turns vegetarian by shunning meat.
According to a tweet from Man Booker Prize, Boyd Tonkin, Chair of the 2016 judges said, "This compact, exquisite and disturbing book will linger long in the minds, and may be the dreams, of its readers."
Kang and Smith will split the prize money of £50,000.
According to the CNN, the short list for this year's prize was notable for its diversity, with novels from the idyllic mountains of Austria to the hellish conditions of 1950's Chinese labor camps, including Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk's latest work, "A Strangeness in My Mind."
According to its website, the Man Booker International Prize was established in 2005, biannually rewarding an author for a body of work originally written in any language as long as it was widely available in English. But from 2016, it has evolved to encourage more publishing and reading of quality fiction in translation, and the prize is to be awarded annually on the basis of a single book.
Image: Man Booker Prize Twitter
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