



Shin recalled through an interpreter, “After my book came out, a Korean woman writer called me and asked, ‘Did you find your mother?’ She thought the story was completely real.” Modest but confident, with long, smooth hair and a gentle demeanor, Ms. Published in English in 2011, and translated into 32 languages, the book tells the quietly devastating story of a hard-working, illiterate rural mom who goes missing (for good, it would seem) in a bustling Seoul train station, during a trip to the big city to visit her neglectful grown children-her businessman son, and her writer daughter.Īt a café in New York, where she traveled last month for a whirlwind tour accompanying the paperback release of her novel, Ms. Shin became the first Korean and the first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize-beating out Haruki Murakami, Amitav Ghosh, Rahul Bhattacharya, Banana Yoshimoto, and other worthy rivals -for her novel Please Look After Mom. Kyung-sook Shin would like everybody to know that she knows exactly where her mother is.
