Han Kang shortlisted for Man Booker award again

Author Han Kang, right, and translator Deborah Smith in Seoul in 2016 / Korea Times file

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Award-winning author Han Kang and her translator Deborah Smith have again been shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, this time for “The White Book.”

Writers and translators of five other literary works were also put on the final list.

The winner of the award, which celebrates the finest works of translated fiction from around the world, will be announced May 22 during a formal dinner at the Victoria &Albert Museum in London.

The selection committee unveiled the short-listed works and their authors and their translators Thursday, weeks after the Man Booker International Prize committee announced a long list of 13 works for this year's award.

The five other finalist works are “Vernon Subutex 1,” “The World Goes on,” “Like a Fading Shadow” and “Frankenstein in Bagdad.”

Han Kang's “The White Book” is about the author's memories and experiences about white objects, including swaddling bands, a newborn's gown, salt, snow and ice.

Before starting the work, the author said, she wrote down a list of items featuring the color white.

“With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book and that the process of writing it would be transformative, would itself transform, into something like white ointment applied to a swelling, like gauze laid over a wound,” the author wrote in the book.

Lisa Appignanesi, chairwoman of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize judging panel, said the six works are a shortlist emblematic of the many adventures of fiction.

“We have mesmeric meditations, raucous, sexy, state-of-the-nation stories, haunting sparseness and spiraling tales, enigmatic cabinets of curiosity and daring acts of imaginative projection_ all this plus sparkling encounters with prose in translation,” she was quoted by the organization on its website. “(T)his is a shortlist to read and re-read.”

Han Kang and Smith won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for “The Vegetarian,” a book about the various types of violence Yeong-hye, a home-maker, has gone through after she rejects eating meat following a bloody, nightmarish dream about human cruelty.

Han Kang became the first Korean to win the Man Booker Award and this prestigious international award helped Korea end decades of drought in international recognition for Korean literary works.

The award-winning book, however, stirred a controversy about literary translation here. The English book had some errors and omissions according to some critics.

Some said the English translation has several serious mistakes that are unacceptable. But other experts defend Smith and say literary translators are allowed to edit or change the original texts if this is necessary to help target language readers understand the original work.