Andres Felipe Solano, writer and instructor at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, wins the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana award for his 2015 novel ‘Corea: apuntes desde la cuerda floja.’ The book is based on the author’s experiences living in Korea.
A book based on a Colombian writer’s experiences living in Korea has won a Colombian literary prize.
Andres Felipe Solano, who teaches at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, won the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana, or the Colombian Narrative Library Award, for his 2015 book “Corea: apuntes desde la cuerda floja,” or “Korea: Notes From the Tightrope.”
The award was created by a group of Colombian firms and broadcasting companies with the aim of “bringing quality books to readers and encouraging the creative writing process.” The award carries a cash prize of COP 40 million, or just under KRW 15 million.
In the book, Solano chronicles his experiences living in Korea for a year, using journal entries to convey his first impressions of an unfamiliar culture. The book was published in 2015 by Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales, a Chilean publishing house. Following its release, it was selected as the most outstanding work published in Latin America in 2015 by Rio Grande Review, a Spanish-English bilingual magazine of contemporary literature and arts.
Hector Faciolince, head judge for the Colombian Narrative Library Award, praised Solano’s work as “a great achievement that mirrors the current trend in contemporary literature, where the boundaries of genre no longer exist.”
In his acceptance speech, Solano said, “While living in Korea, a country on the opposite end of my native Colombia, I searched for the source of the will to write. For the book, I took the unfamiliarity that emerged from being in a foreign country and wrote down those feelings in the familiar form of journal entries.”
Solano was invited to Korea by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTIK) for the first time in 2008 as part of its exchange program for writers from Asia, Latin America and Africa. In 2010, he was mentioned on “The Best of Young Spanish-language Novelists” list by the British literary magazine Granta. He currently works in Seoul as a Spanish language instructor at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.
By Lee Hana
Korea.net Staff Writer
Photo: Literature Translation Institute of Korea
hlee10@korea.kr
