Every year, France, Japan, Brazil and more crown their best book. Spin the globe to see which ones you can read in English, and which are still waiting.
4,667 books · 44 prizes · 39 countries
Daesan 2025 · Winner
Myeongnanghan Isibongui jjalgo tujaeng eomneun sam
Title translated by AI:“The Short, Struggle-Free Life of Cheerful Lee Si-bong”
Novel · 527 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:After his father is killed by a truck while jaywalking, Lee Si-seup drinks and gives his heart only to Lee Si-bong, the bichon frisé who may have caused the accident, until breeders turn up claiming the dog is royal bichon blood.
Daesan 2024 · Winner
247ui modeun geot
Title translated by AI:“Everything About 247”
Kim Hee-seon · 52 when first published
Novel · 222 pages · Speculative, Politics
AI-generated summary:In a near-future Korea where fever medicine is banned after the pandemic, case 247, a super-spreader of a new Nipah virus strain, dies alone in a spacecraft he was exiled to, and everyone has a different story about who he was.
Daesan 2023 · Winner
Jejudouda
Title translated by AI:“This Is Jeju”
Hyun Ki-young · 82 when first published
Novel · Historical, War, Politics
AI-generated summary:In Jocheon, a Jeju seaside village long known for defying rulers from the mainland, a boy grows from eleven to sixteen between the last years of Japanese rule and the massacres of 1948, told as an old survivor's memories.
Daesan 2022 · Winner
작별하지 않는다 · Jakbyeolhaji anneunda
Han Kang · 51 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:A novelist haunted by a dream of black logs standing like gravestones in a snowy field gets an urgent call from a friend in hospital, who begs her to go to her house on Jeju that very day to save the bird left there alone.
Also: Warwick Prize 2025 shortlist
Daesan 2021 · Winner
Balgeun bam
Title translated by AI:“Bright Night”
Choi Eunyoung · 37 when first published
Novel · 343 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:After her divorce, Jiyeon starts over as an observatory researcher in the seaside town of Huiryeong, where she runs into the grandmother she has barely known because of a rift between her and Jiyeon's mother.
Daesan 2020 · Winner
9번의 일 · 9beonui il
Kim Hye-jin · 36 when first published
Novel · 208 pages
AI-generated summary:An installation technician at a telecom company refuses to take the voluntary redundancy he is pushed towards and stays on, only to be moved from post to post with nothing real to do, until he is just No. 9.
Daesan 2019 · Winner
단순한 진심 · Dansunhan jinsim
Cho Haejin · 43 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Migration, Family
AI-generated summary:Nana, a Korean-born playwright adopted to France, learns she is pregnant just as a Korean student asks to make a film about the name she had before her adoption, and travels to Seoul to look for where she came from.
Daesan 2018 · Winner
Ahopbeonjjae pado
Title translated by AI:“The Ninth Wave”
Choi Eun-mi · 39 when first published
Novel · 371 pages · Crime, Politics
AI-generated summary:Song In-hwa comes back to Cheokju, an east-coast town split over plans for a nuclear power plant, eighteen years after her father died at a limestone quarry. Soon an old man who was the chief suspect then dies of poisoned rice wine.
Daesan 2017 · Winner
Dieo raelpeu roren
Title translated by AI:“Dear Ralph Lauren”
Son Bo-mi · 37 when first published
Novel · Love, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Told to leave his graduate programme in America after nine years, a Korean physics student finds a forgotten wedding invitation from Su-yeong, the girl who once asked him to translate her letter begging Ralph Lauren to make a watch.
Daesan 2016 · Winner
Yuryeongui sigan
Title translated by AI:“The Time of Ghosts”
Novel · 260 pages · Family, Politics, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Yi Seop went north as a socialist during the Korean War, saw what the North really was and risked his life to come back south, only to find that his wife and two sons had gone north after him.
Daesan 2015 · Winner
계속해보겠습니다 · Gyesokaebogetseumnida
Hwang Jungeun · 38 when first published
Novel · Family
AI-generated summary:Two sisters, Sora and Nana, grow up wary of love beside a mother who fell apart when their father died in an accident at work. When Nana becomes pregnant, the cold, orderly life the sisters have built begins to give way.
Daesan 2014 · Winner
Adeurui abeoji
Title translated by AI:“The Son's Father”
Kim Won-il · 71 when first published
Novel · 382 pages · Autofiction, Family, War
AI-generated summary:Under his own name, a writer traces the father he last saw at eight, when the man went north during the Korean War: a clerk turned student in Japan, rural activist and Communist Party organiser who left his wife and children for his cause.
Daesan 2013 · Winner
Yeoindeulgwa jinhwahaneun jeokdeul
Title translated by AI:“Women and Their Evolving Enemies”
Kim Soom · 39 when first published
Novel · Family
AI-generated summary:A family comes strangely apart: a mother-in-law who goes still as a fossil whenever she meets an enemy, a daughter-in-law in low-paid, disposable service jobs, and a son and husband who cares about nothing but himself.
Daesan 2012 · Winner
어떤 작위의 세계 · Eotteon jagwiui segye
Jung Young-moon · 46 when first published
Novel · 163 pages · Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Spending a spring and summer in San Francisco, a writer remembers an earlier visit to California, when he drank tequila with a former girlfriend and her new partner, took potshots at agaves and stayed on alone for the fog.
Daesan 2011 · Winner
이별하는 골짜기 · Ibyeolhaneun goljjagi
Lim Chul-woo · 56 when first published
Novel · 216 pages
AI-generated summary:At Byeoreogok, a small country railway halt about to disappear, people who refuse to forget a wounded past each tell their story, one after another, across the four seasons.
Daesan 2010 · Winner
Saebyeogui nana
Title translated by AI:“Nana at Dawn”
Park Hyoung-su · 38 when first published
Novel
AI-generated summary:Leo, a hapless Korean bound for Africa, stops over in Thailand, falls under the spell of Ploy, the best-known prostitute on the street, and never moves on, staying as a stranger in the red-light lanes around Bangkok's Nana station.
Daesan 2009 · Winner
Gosanja
Park Bum-shin · 63 when first published
Novel · 359 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:The life of Kim Jeong-ho, the nineteenth-century mapmaker of Joseon, whose father died leading troops by a faulty official map and who left home at ten to wander the country as a carpenter.
Daesan 2008 · Winner
Nagasaki papa
Novel · Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:Twenty-one-year-old Han Yu-na crosses to Japan and cooks in a Nagasaki restaurant while she looks for Jeong, the factory hand she has always been told is her real father. Her colleagues are misfits each carrying a story.
Daesan 2007 · Winner
Namhansanseong
Kim Hoon · 59 when first published
Novel · 383 pages · Historical, War, Politics
AI-generated summary:Winter 1636: a Qing army over a hundred thousand strong surrounds the mountain fortress of Namhansanseong, where King Injo has taken refuge, and his ministers split between fighting on to an honourable end and surrendering to survive.
Daesan 2006 · Winner
Geu yeojaui jaseojeon
Title translated by AI:“Her Autobiography”
Kim In-suk · 42 when first published
Short stories · 266 pages
AI-generated summary:Eight stories of people looking for a reason to go on after love and dreams have gone. In the title story, a woman novelist who was in her twenties in the 1980s is hired to ghostwrite a rich upstart's memoirs and stalls at his services to democracy.
Daesan 2005 · Winner
Naneun yuryeongjakgaimnida
Title translated by AI:“I Am a Ghostwriter”
Kim Yeon-su · 35 when first published
Short stories · 266 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Nine stories that dig into what lies between the lines of history books and old records, told by narrators who set down the stories no one else was there to write.
Daesan 2004 · Winner
Soradan ganeun gil
Title translated by AI:“The Road to Soradan”
Yun Heung-gil · 61 when first published
Short stories · 325 pages · War
AI-generated summary:Old classmates close to sixty go back to their primary school for the first time in forty years, and each tells what happened to him during the war, seen as he saw it then, as a child.
Daesan 2003 · Winner
Saramui hyanggi
Title translated by AI:“The Scent of People”
Song Ki-won · 56 when first published
Short stories · 275 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Nine linked stories drawn from the author's own hard family history and the people of his home village: a half-sister dying of cancer, a blind cousin, a posthumous child, a leper's daughter who has hidden her past all her life.
Daesan 2002 · Winner
Gaeksusallok
Title translated by AI:“Scattered Notes of a Wanderer's Sorrow”
Kim Won-u · 55 when first published
Short stories · 447 pages
AI-generated summary:Five stories and novellas about people the author calls refugees: worn-down outsiders pushed to the edge of a society of vulgarity and pretence. In one, a narrator and a Mr Kim argue over whether a modern novel can be written in Korea at all.
Daesan 2001 · Winner
손님 · Sonnim
Hwang Sok-yong · 58 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:Built on the twelve stages of a Hwanghae shaman rite for the dead, the novel goes back to the 1950 massacre in Sincheon, North Korea, where two creeds brought in from outside, Christianity and Marxism, turned villagers against one another.
Daesan 2000 · Winner
Dumulmeori
Lee Yun-gi · 53 when first published
Short stories
AI-generated summary:Thirteen stories and novellas from the late 1990s. In the title story, a son works hard to hide something from his elderly father, who has known about it all along and quietly lets him go on.