Cheon Myeong-kwan's 'Whale' Nominated for the Booker Prize, One of the World's Top 3 Literary Awards (Comprehensive)

Judging Panel "Reexamining the Changes Korea Experienced in Rapid Transition"
Final Nominees Announced on April 18, Winners Revealed on May 23

Author Cheon Myeong-kwan's novel Gorae (2004) has been nominated for the International Booker Prize, the UK's most prestigious literary award. On the 14th (local time), the Booker Prize announced the longlist of thirteen works for this year, including Gorae.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Gorae is a novel depicting the life story of Geumbok, who rises from a mountain village girl to a successful entrepreneur in a small town. Through the myriad events and twists among various characters, it explores humanity's destructive desires. The Booker Prize judging panel commented, "The story follows the lives of three characters set in a remote Korean village," and "It satirically reexamines the rapid transition Korea underwent from a premodern to a postmodern society." Regarding Cheon, they introduced him as "a Korean novelist, screenwriter, and director whose works have been translated into eight languages."

Cheon, widely known for Gorae and My Uncle Bruce Lee, was born in 1964 in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province. After working various jobs such as a professional shop clerk and insurance salesperson, he entered the film industry later in life. He joined a Chungmuro film company and wrote screenplays for films like The Gunman (1995) and Beijing Restaurant (1999). At the age of forty, after a film project he was preparing to direct fell through, he debuted as a writer. His first short story, Frank and I, won the 2003 Munhakdongne New Writer Award. His subsequent works include Gorae, The Turkey and the Laborer, This Is a Man's World, and After Work. Last year, he fulfilled his dream of becoming a film director with the movie Hot Blood.

Until 2019, the Booker Prize was known as the Man Booker Prize and is considered one of the world's top three literary awards alongside the Nobel Prize in Literature and the French Prix Goncourt. The International Booker Prize was established in 2005. It selects works translated into English by non-English-speaking authors and awards ?50,000, split equally between the author and the translator. Cheon was listed alongside translator Kim Ji-young, who translated Gorae into English.

After announcing the longlist of thirteen works, the Booker Prize will select a shortlist of six finalists. This year's longlist includes thirteen works by authors from twelve countries, such as Ninth Building by Zou Jingzi (China), Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov (Ukraine), The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Cond? (France), Standing Heavy by Gauz (Ivory Coast), and Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria).

The shortlist will be announced on April 18, and the winner will be revealed at the awards ceremony in London on May 23. The only Korean author to have won the honor is Han Kang for The Vegetarian in 2016. Han was also shortlisted in 2018 for White Book. Last year, Park Sang-young's Love in the Big City and Jeong Bora's The Curse Rabbit were respectively longlisted and shortlisted. In 2019, Hwang Sok-yong's Sunset was selected for the longlist.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.