Author Kim Ae-ran's (46) short story collection I Said Goodbye has been selected as the winner of the 41st Manhae Literary Award. The special award was given to the late Jeong Byeong-ho's Awakening from a Long Sleep, who passed away in 2024.
According to Changbi, the publisher overseeing the award, I Said Goodbye was praised for its portrayal of how marginalized individuals collapse and resist in the face of a privileged class that monopolizes wealth and real estate. Changbi described the work as a dense, realistic narrative that sharply captures the relationships between money, emotions, and language.
I Said Goodbye is Kim Ae-ran's first short story collection in eight years, featuring seven stories. It includes the award-winning short story 'Home Party,' which received the Excellence Award at the 2022 Kim Seung-ok Literary Award, and 'Good Neighbors,' which won the same year's Oh Young-soo Literary Award. The collection begins with characters such as a couple contemplating buying a home and an individual who invests all their savings into a business, exploring their search for space.
Kim Ae-ran began her literary career in 2002 with the short story 'The House That Doesn't Knock,' which won the first Daesan Literary Award. She has published short story collections including Run, Father, Saliva, Contrail, and The Outside is Summer, as well as novels like My Life is a Whirlwind and One of Them is a Lie. Her essay collections include A Name Easy to Forget and I Wrote That. She has received several awards, including the Korean Herald Literary Award, the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award, the Shin Dong-yup Literary Award, and the Kim Yu-jeong Literary Award.
The special award-winning work Awakening from a Long Sleep is a book by the late Jeong Byeong-ho (1955-2024), a public anthropologist, documenting the excavation of the remains of victims of forced labor during Japanese colonial rule. It includes scenes from the excavation site, including remains found in Shumarinai, Hokkaido.
The Manhae Literary Award was established in 1973 to honor the literary spirit of Manhae Han Yong-un (1879-1944), a poet, independence activist, and Buddhist monk. It is awarded to authors with over ten years of experience or equivalent who have published literary works in Korean within the last two years. The main award carries a prize of 30 million won, while the special award is worth 10 million won and is given for works in different genres.
Last year, the 40th award went to Kim Geum-hee's novel Report on the Repair of the Large Greenhouse for the main award, and the special award was given to the Kim Dae-jung Oral Memoir, planned by Yonsei University's Kim Dae-jung Library. This year's award ceremony is scheduled for late November.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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