Novelist Han Kang, the first Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, clinched the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award in the United States with the novel We Do Not Part. This is the first time a work by a Korean author has received the award. Observers said the win, one of the most prestigious literary honors in the U.S., once again proves the global stature of Korean literature.
According to a compilation of reports on the 26th (local time) by major outlets including the New York Times (NYT), AP and Reuters, the NBCC selected the English edition of We Do Not Part, written by Han Kang, as the fiction winner at the 2025 publishing year awards held in New York on the day.
The NBCC Award is considered the most prestigious honor in the U.S. publishing world. Critics active across the United States annually select the best books by institutional sector—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, biography, and translation—and present awards. The judging panel is known for rigorously evaluating the literary completeness of nominees through multiple review stages.
Han Kang was named among the five final nominees in Jan. and, after a fierce competition, was chosen as the final winner. Poet Kim Hye-soon won in the poetry institutional sector in 2024, but this is the first time a Korean author has won in the fiction institutional sector.
This year's fiction institutional sector award marks the third time in the 51-year history of the NBCC that a translation has won. It is a milestone that comes 18 years after W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz in 2001 and Roberto Bolaño's 2666 in 2008. The English translation of Han Kang's novel was jointly undertaken by Lee Yewon and Paige Aniyah Morris.
We Do Not Part is set against the backdrop of the April 3 Jeju Uprising in Korea in the 1940s. The narrative, which moves between fantasy and reality as the protagonist heads to Jeju Island to see a friend, is praised as overwhelming. The work delicately portrays the tragic scars left by state violence and the catastrophe that took tens of thousands of lives.
Local critics lauded the overwhelming depth created by Han Kang's distinctive prose meeting a tragic history. Heather Scott Partington, this year's NBCC fiction institutional sector chair, told the NYT it was "a work marked by dazzling melancholy, bleak weather and murmuring syntax," adding that it "lingers like a moody, mesmerizing dream." Outlets including the Washington Post (WP) gave prominent coverage to the win, closely examining the historical background and literary significance of the Jeju April 3 Uprising that Han Kang addresses.