Colombian writer Andres Felipe Solano, currently teaching at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, received a prestigious Colombian literary award, the LTIK announced Tuesday.

Solano won the “Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana,” or Library Award of Colombian Narrative, which carries a cash prize of 40 million Colombian peso ($12 million), for his 2015 work based on his experience living in Korea. 

“Corea: Apuntes Desde la Cuerda Floja (Korea: Notes From a Tightrope)” is a chronicle of the writer’s experience of living in Korea for a year.

“I wanted to question what drives one to write through my experience in Korea located on the opposite end from Colombia,” said Solano in accepting the award. “I tried to bridge the unfamiliarity that emerged from the long distance (between Colombia and Korea) by taking the familiar form of journals and chronicles for my book.”

Hector Faciolince, the head judge of the awards, praised Solano’s work as a great accomplishment that “represents the trend in contemporary literature whose boundaries of genres have been fading.”

The book was also selected as the most outstanding work published in Latin America in 2015 by ”Rio Grande Review,” a Spanish-English magazine of contemporary literature and arts.

Solano, previously named “The Best Young Spanish-language Novelist” by the British literary magazine “Granta,” currently lives and works in Seoul, teaching students who aspire to become professional literature translators at the translation academy of the LTIK. He was invited to the LTIK as part of its exchange program of writers in Asia, Latin America and Africa in 2008.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)