Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024, Han Kang’s novel ‘The Vegetarian’ won which other prestigious award?

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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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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) 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) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2025 Q24 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q24 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer