BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 24 of 150

Correct — C, International Booker Prize. Han Kang's novel was published in Korean in 2007 as Chaesikjuuija and reached English readers in 2015 in Deborah Smith's translation; it won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, the award renamed the International Booker Prize in 2019. Two details make that win worth remembering rather than merely knowing. First, 2016 was the very year the prize changed character: until then the Man Booker International had been given every two years for a writer's whole body of work, and from 2016 it has been given annually for a single book translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, with the GBP 50,000 divided equally between author and translator. The Vegetarian was therefore among the first books to win it in its modern form, and Deborah Smith took half the prize. Second, it was the first Korean-language novel ever to win. The Nobel that heads the question is a separate honour and is not attached to this book at all: the Swedish Academy gave Han Kang the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for her writing as a whole, citing 'her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life', making her the first South Korean and the first Asian woman to receive it. Candidates objected to this item, and BPSC dealt with the objections in its published remarks of 31 October 2025: the objection rested on a claim that more than one Nobel Prize for Literature had been awarded in 2024, the Commission held that claim to be wrong, and it confirmed option (c). It is right on the facts — Han Kang was the sole 2024 Literature laureate, and the Literature prize has been divided between two writers only four times in its history, in 1904, 1917, 1966 and 1974. On the plain reading of the options the same conclusion follows: of the three prizes offered, the novel won exactly one, so (d) has nothing to stand on.

• (a)Pulitzer Prize — Not merely false but structurally impossible. The Pulitzer Prizes were founded under the will of the newspaper proprietor Joseph Pulitzer, have been administered by Columbia University in New York since 1917, and their book categories are American: the Fiction Pulitzer goes to distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. A novel first published in Seoul in Korean was never eligible.
• (b)Pen America Literary Awards — A real and substantial slate of awards, given by the American centre of PEN International — the writers' association founded in 1921 — across fiction, non-fiction, poetry and translation. That translation strand is the bait, because the story of The Vegetarian in English is inseparable from its translator. But the translation honour this book carries is the shared International Booker of 2016, not a PEN America Literary Award.
• (d)More than one of the above — The option the objections were filed for, and the one the Commission's published remark refused. It needs at least two of the three named prizes to have gone to this novel; only the International Booker did. Note too that the Nobel in the stem is not a fourth prize for the book — the Literature Nobel is awarded to a writer for a body of work, never to a single title.

The world's major literary prizes are separated by two things: what they honour, and who is eligible. The Nobel Prize in Literature comes from Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, was first awarded in 1901, is decided by the Swedish Academy, announced in October and presented at Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death; it goes to an author for a body of work and carries no nationality bar. The Booker is really two prizes. The Booker Prize, run since 1969, is for a novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, and since 2014 it is open to authors of any nationality. The International Booker Prize is its sibling for translated literature: begun in 2005 as the Man Booker International for a living author's whole output, biennially, it was recast in 2016 as an annual award for one book translated into English, with the money split equally between author and translator, and renamed in 2019. The Pulitzer Prizes, endowed by Joseph Pulitzer and administered by Columbia University from 1917, are chiefly American — journalism, letters, drama and music — and the Fiction category requires an American author. The PEN America Literary Awards come from the United States centre of PEN International, the writers' association founded in London in 1921. Read those four descriptions and the pattern behind almost every prize question emerges: a prize is defined by its jurisdiction, by its object (a book or a career) and by its language of publication.

Take the stem apart before touching the options, because it names two different prizes and only one of them belongs to the book. The Nobel is Han Kang's, awarded for her writing as a whole in 2024; the question asks what THE NOVEL won, so the answer must be a prize given to a book. That single distinction already tells you the answer will be a book award, and it disarms the reflex of hunting for something else the Nobel is connected to. Next, eliminate by jurisdiction, which is faster than recalling anything about Han Kang. The Pulitzer's book categories are closed to non-American authors, so option (a) dies on a fact about the Pulitzer, not on a fact about Korea. What is then left is a novel written in Korean that broke into English and became famous in translation — and there is exactly one major prize built for that case, awarded to a single translated book and splitting its money between author and translator. That is the International Booker, and The Vegetarian took it in 2016 in Deborah Smith's translation. The discriminator is therefore the word 'translated': it is the only property of this book that any of the three prizes is designed to reward. The trap is (d), and it is not hypothetical — candidates filed objections arguing for it. The belief behind them, that two Literature Nobels can be given in one year, has a real source: in 2019 the Swedish Academy did announce two laureates on the same day, Olga Tokarczuk for the deferred 2018 prize and Peter Handke for 2019, after the 2018 award was postponed. Two years' prizes announced together is not one year's prize shared, and 2024 had a single laureate.

• Han Kang, born 27 November 1970 at Gwangju, received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature as the sole laureate of that year, cited by the Swedish Academy for 'her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life'; she is the first South Korean and the first Asian woman to win the Literature prize.
• The Vegetarian appeared in Korean in 2007 and in Deborah Smith's English translation in 2015, and won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 — the first Korean-language novel to do so — with the GBP 50,000 shared equally between author and translator.
• 2016 was the first year the Man Booker International was awarded for a single translated book rather than biennially for a body of work; the award was renamed the International Booker Prize in 2019, and again in July 2026, under new sponsorship, as the Bukhman International Booker Prize, with the winner's purse rising from GBP 50,000 to GBP 100,000 from 2027. The name in the question is the one it carried in 2016 and on exam day.
• The Nobel Prize in Literature was instituted by Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, first awarded in 1901, is decided by the Swedish Academy and presented at Stockholm on 10 December; it has been divided between two writers on only four occasions — 1904, 1917, 1966 and 1974.
• The belief that two Literature Nobels were given in one year traces to 2019, when Olga Tokarczuk received the postponed 2018 prize and Peter Handke the 2019 prize on the same day. Han Kang's other honours include the Yi Sang Literary Award (2005), the Malaparte Prize (2017) for Human Acts, the Prix Medicis etranger (2023) and the Ho-Am Prize in the Arts (2024).

• Treating the Nobel as a prize for The Vegetarian — the Literature Nobel goes to a writer for a body of work, never to a single title
• Reaching for the Pulitzer because the novel is famous in English; the Pulitzer's book categories require an American author, so a Korean novel is not eligible at all
• Ticking 'More than one of the above' after verifying only one option — that is what the objections to this question did, and the Commission's published remark rejected them

BPSC asks the pairing directly — one laureate, one named book, three prizes, and a 'more than one' escape hatch that punishes anyone who stops at the first plausible option. UPSC asks the same syllabus by interrogating the prize rather than the person: in 2007 it asked which book won Kiran Desai the Man Booker of 2006, and in 2008 whether the Pulitzer is given by the Commonwealth Foundation to citizens of Commonwealth countries — a statement built to catch students who know a prize's name but not its jurisdiction. Learn who awards each prize, whom it is open to, and whether it honours a book or a career, and both styles collapse.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The International Booker Prize, as reconstituted in 2016, is awarded for

  • (a)a lifetime body of work by a living author writing in English
  • (b)a single book translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, the prize money being shared equally by the author and the translator
  • (c)a first novel by a writer under thirty-five years of age
  • (d)a work of non-fiction on a scientific subject

  Answer(b) a single book translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, the prize money being shared equally by the author and the translator — the format adopted in 2016, when GBP 50,000 began to be split between author and translator. Option (a) describes the prize as it was before 2016, when it was given biennially for a body of work.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following novels won the International Booker Prize as a work translated from an Indian language ?

  • (a)The Inheritance of Loss
  • (b)Tomb of Sand
  • (c)The White Tiger
  • (d)The God of Small Things

  Answer(b) Tomb of Sand — Geetanjali Shree's Ret Samadhi, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, won the International Booker Prize in 2022, the first Hindi novel to do so. The other three were written in English and won the Booker Prize proper, in 2006, 2008 and 1997 respectively.