The English edition of Han Kang's "We Do Not Part" has been longlisted in the translated literature category for the 2025 National Book Award in the United States, the National Book Foundation announced Tuesday.
Among the 10 works announced on this year’s longlist, finalists are set to be revealed on Oct. 7, with the winner to be announced on Nov. 19.
The novel is the Nobel laureate’s most recent work of fiction, first published in Korean in September 2021. Han, the first Asian woman to win the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, released an essay collection in April, her first book since receiving the award.
In its announcement, the National Book Award described the novel as bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion, blurring the boundaries between dream and reality.
It added, "Both a hymn to enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable pain — and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.”
The book was co-translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris into English and published in the US by Hogarth, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Presented by the National Book Foundation, the National Book Award is widely regarded as the most prestigious literary accolade in the United States. It recognizes outstanding works in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people’s literature.
Among Korean literature, Cho Nam-ju’s novel “Kim Ji-young, Born 1982” (translated by Jamie Chang) and Kim Bo-young's short story collection “On the Origin of Species and Other Stories” (translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort), and Bora Chung's "Cursed Bunny" (translated by Anton Hur) also were previously longlisted in the translated literature category.
hwangdh@heraldcorp.com
