VOL.69/2024.04

Trends in Korean Book Exports

Jung-myung Lee’s The Investigation Receives Premio Selezione Bancarella Award

2017.7.28

South Korean author Jung-myung Lee has received one of the most prestigious awards in Italy for works of literature. Lee won high recognition for his mystery thriller , which aims to show humanity can survive in the most dire of wars.

Jung-myung Lee's The Investigation
Italian title: La guardia, il poeta e l'investigatore

Late on July 16 in Italy, Jung-myung Lee's The Investigation (EunHaengNaMu Publishing Co) was awarded one of the most prestigious literary prizes, the Premio Selezione Bancarella. This award is given to the six finalists for the Premio Bancarella award, which was later handed to Italian writer Matteo Strukul.
Among the six shortlisted authors this year, Lee was the only non-Italian writer. The Premio Bancarella award is the only literary prize given out in Italy where booksellers are included in the judge panel. They can vote to select the winners.

Finalists for the 2017 Premio Bancarella Award

The award ceremony was held in a small city named Pontremoli in the region of Tuscany to observe the history the award has with the city and the booksellers from that area.
During the 19th century, the booksellers were comprised of sellers of books and almanacs, those operating bookstores and small publishers. The prize was first established in 1953 and the first top award was given to Ernest Hemingway for his novel, The Old Man and the Sea. Other notable works that have received the award include U.S. writer Alex Haley's Roots (1972), John Grisham's The Client (1994), Italian author Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (1989) and Norwegian Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World (1995).

Poster for the 2017 Premio Selezione Bancarella Award

Foreign publication rights for Lee's The Investigation have been sold into 12 countries so far including Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam and most of these countries are already selling his book in their respective languages with the exception of a few countries like Japan and Vietnam where translation work has not yet been completed. This novel has continuously been in the spotlight on the international literary scene after being longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2015.

Photo of the trophy (left) and Lee on the stage for the award (right)

Written by Joseph Lee, President of KL Management