Author Han Kang on Feb. 29 won France's Emile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature for her 2021 novel "I Do Not Bid Farewell." Shown is the awards ceremony at the Guimet Museum in Paris. (Yonhap News)

By Lee Hyemin

Author Han Kang's novel "I Do Not Bid Farewell" has won France's Emile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature.

The Seoul-based Literature Translation Institute (LTI) of Korea on March 4 said the book released in 2021 won the honor on Feb. 29. Han is the first Korean to win the award since Hwang Sok-yong in 2018 for his novel "At Dusk." 

 
"The book is a hymn of friendship, a tribute to the imagination, and above all, a powerful indictment of forgetting," the judging panel said. "These beautiful pages hold far more value than a novel; they shed light on traumatic memories buried for decades." 

"I Do Not Bid Farewell" looks at the tragic 1948-49 uprising on Jeju Island through the perspectives of three women. With LTI's support, the work was jointly translated by Choi Kyungran and Pierre Bisiou and published in August last year in French under the title "Impossibles adieux."

 
In November last year, the novel also won the Prix Medicis for foreign literature, one of France's top four literary awards.

The annual Guimet award is given by the Guimet Museum (Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts), one of the largest museums of Asian arts in Europe. The winner is selected among contemporary Asian literary works published in French the previous year. 

"Impossibles adieux," the French-language edition of author Han Kang's 2021 novel "I Do Not Bid Farewell," was published in August last year in France. (Facebook page of French publisher Grasset)