South Korean author Han Kang has won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize for her "unforgettably powerful" novel 'The Vegetarian' which deals with a woman's rejection of human brutality and giving up of eating meat.


Kang, 45, beat writers including Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and international bestseller Elena Ferrante to win the 50,000-pound award last night which she shared with her novel's translator Deborah Smith.


Published by Portobello Books, 'The Vegetarian' was selected unanimously among 155 books by a panel of five judges chaired by noted critic and editor Boyd Tonkin who described Kang's work as "lyrical and lacerating".


Kang, who currently teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts, is already very popular in South Korea and has won Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today's Young Artist Award, and the Korean Literature Novel Award. 'The Vegetarian' is her first novel to be translated into English by 28-year-old Smith who started learning Korean only at the age of 21.