Han Kang’s ‘Human Acts’ ranks best seller of the year

Novelist Han Kang’s ‘Human Acts’ topped the best-seller book list for this year. According to Kyobo Book and Yes24 on Monday, sales of ‘Human Acts’ saw the sharpest increase since the announcement of Han Kang’s Nobel Prize in Literature win on October 10.

At Kyobo, the book had the highest sales volume (from January to November this year) among the top overall bestseller books for the past 10 years. Yes24 reported that for the past two months since the Nobel Prize was announced, sales of Han Kang's books have increased about 100 times compared to the same period last year. Boosted by such a strong response, the author’s other books, such as ‘The Vegetarian’ ranked second, while ‘We Do Not Part’ ranked third in the annual rankings of the two major bookstores. Specific sales figures were not disclosed.

Successful sales of books by Han Kang impacted other Korean literary works as well. According to Yes24, sales of Kim Joo-hye's 'Beasts of a Little Land,' which recently won Russia's Tolstoy Literature Prize, and Hwang Seok-young's ‘Mater 2-10,’ which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize of the International category this year, increased 36 and 95 times in sales, respectively, after Han won the Nobel Prize in Literature.


김소민 기자 somin@donga.com