Poet Kim Hyesoon has won this year's International Prize for Literature from Germany's Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) for her collection "Autobiography of Death." Shown is the book's German-language version. (HKW's official website)

By Margareth Theresia

Poet Kim Hyesoon is the first Asian writer to win the International Prize for Literature from Germany's Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures), aka HKW, for her collection "Autobiography of Death."

The Daesan Foundation in Seoul said HKW on July 17 announced Kim and Park Sool and Uljana Wolf, both of whom translated the work into German, as this year's winners at the awards ceremony in Berlin.

"Autobiography of Death" was first released in 2016 in Korea and its German-language version from publisher S. Fischer Verlag came out in February this year. The translation was part of the foundation's project for translation and publication of Korean literature.

Kim was a unanimous selection by the jury, which said, "In the wonder of Hyesoon's poetry, meaning is often revealed precisely in the enigmatic."

"The texts open up as we follow their rhythm and read them over and over again, the images reveal themselves like directions that only become visible when the right direction has already been taken."

Going to both the author and translator of the winning work, the annual literary honor of recognizes an outstanding achievement translated into and published in German. The prize money of EUR 35,000 (KRW 56 million) is split between the writer (EUR 20,000) and the translator (EUR 15,000).

margareth@korea.kr