Photo : YONHAP News
Korean American writer Kim Ju-hea was named the winner of the 2024 Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award in the foreign fiction category for her debut novel, “Beasts of a Little Land.”
Kim and Kirill Batygin, who translated the book into Russian, were awarded Russia’s largest annual prize in literature at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre on Thursday, local time.
While “Beasts of a Little Land” is a story of love, war and redemption set against the backdrop of the Korean independence movement during Japan’s colonial rule, news of Kim’s win coincides with South Korean writer Han Kang being named this year’s Nobel literature laureate.
The annual literature award was founded by the Leo Tolstoy Museum Estate and Samsung Electronics in 2003 to mark the 175th anniversary of the birth of the celebrated Russian writer.