Man Booker International Prize-winner Han Kang moves to Hamish Hamilton in two-book deal

Han Kang, the winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, has moved to Hamish Hamilton in a two-book deal. 

She was previously published in the UK by Portobello Books, an imprint at Granta.

Simon Prosser, Hamish Hamilton publishing director, bought British and Commonwealth volume rights to Greek Lessons and We Do Not Part from Laurence Laluyaux at Rogers, Coleridge and White. North American rights have been acquired by Parisa Ebrahimi at Hogarth, and translation rights to We Do Not Part have been sold by RCW in 17 territories so far. 

Hamish Hamilton will publish Greek Lessons in April 2023, in a translation by Deborah Smith, and We Do Not Part a year later, in a translation by Emily Won. 

Greek Lessons was published in Korea in 2011, and was Han’s follow-up to her internationally acclaimed novel The Vegetarian (Portobello Books), the first of her works to be translated into English and the book which won her the Man Booker International Prize. It tells the interwoven stories of a Greek instructor who is losing his sight and a woman who refuses to speak. Described as uniquely involving, tender and thoughtful, it explores the depths and limits of human connection. 

The second book, We Do Not Part, was published in Korea in September 2021, and was Han’s first full-length novel in five years. Like Human Acts (Portobello) it has at its heart a tragic human event – in this case the massacre of civilians in 1948 on Jeju Island – a place to which the protagonist of this novel journeys in the present, progressively haunted by the spirits of the past.

Prosser said: “Han Kang is one of the writers I admire most in the world – for her radical openness and sensitivity to the lives of others, both living and dead; and for her insistence on turning towards rather than turning away from the paradox of what it is to be human: that as a species we are capable of both utmost violence and utmost love. Her books are made from light and dark; they remember and they mourn; and they somehow find hope and dignity in the face of cruelty and oppression. I feel very lucky to know her and to be working with her.” 

Han added: “It gives me deep joy that We Do Not Part, my first new novel in five years since The White Book, and Greek Lessons, an earlier novel that remains close to my heart, are to set sail with Hamish Hamilton and Hogarth. I very much look forward to the publication of these two titles.”