Samantha Kuok-Leese

History is made at the Man Asian Literary Prize

– Hong Kong

South Korean author Kyung-sook Shin has become the first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize for her novel Please Look After Mother, which tells the story of a family’s heartbreaking search  for their mum after she goes missing from a Seoul subway station.

During a black-tie dinner hosted at the Conrad hotel in Hong Kong, BBC Special Correspondent and chair of this year’s judging  panel Razia Iqbal announced the winner of Asia’s most prestigious prize for literature.

She said the reason they chose Shin’s book is because it is “an amazing story”,  beautifully written and poignantly told,  through a compelling structure of different narrative voices.

Iqbal observed that It is at once an intimate portrait of a family’s search for their mother and an insight into Korea after the Korean War: ‘Looking through the microcosm of the family, [we see] how the country is moving into modernity, leaving behind its traditional rural ways of life.’

The other two judges were Pulitzer-prize nominee and head of the Creative Writing programme at Princeton University Chang-rae Lee and Vikas Swarup, who wrote the novel Q&A which became the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

Swarup said that Please Look After Mother was the most complete novel on the shortlist of seven, which was announced in January, with Lee adding that it was ‘a total performance’. Iqbal also revealed that the winner was not a close call.

Please Look After Mother, which was published in South Korea in 2009, is already a huge commercial success having sold 1.93 million copies in the author’s home country to date.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in