South Korean novelist Han wins Man Booker International Prize

South Korean author Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction on Monday for her novel The Vegetarian, a dark, surreal story about a woman who gives up eating meat and seeks to become a tree.

The 45-year-old Han had been shortlisted for the prize for fiction in translation to English along with Italian writer Elena Ferrante, Angola's Jose Eduardo Agualusa, Chinese author Yan Lianke, Turkey's Orhan Pamuk and Austrian Robert Seethaler.

"This compact, exquisite and disturbing book will linger long in the minds, and maybe the dreams, of its readers," Boyd Tonkin, chairman of the 2016 judging panel, was cited by the foundation as saying.