South Korean novelist Han Kang was not too buoyant despite her nomination for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize and all the public attention the news has created in her home country.

She rose to fame in South Korea after the prize's organizer announced on its website earlier this month that Han's "The Vegetarian," translated by Deborah Smith, was among the 13 books contending for the 2016 prize. She has become the first Korean nominee for the prize.

"I'm really calm. I'm going to keep writing books just in a calm and serious manner as I do now," Han said during an interview with Yonhap News Agency on the sidelines of the Paris Book Fair on Friday.

She was one of the 30 Korean writers invited to the book fair that took place from Thursday to Sunday. South Korea was the guest of honor to mark the 130th anniversary of diplomatic ties with France.

Han said she never expected the book to be longlisted for the most authoritative literary award in the English-speaking world.

"The Vegetarian was completed 11 years ago. It was nine years ago that the book was out after spending two years resolving copyright problems. It's embarrassing because it's an old book; nothing has changed with the book and neither have I."

She ascribed the nomination to the book's translator and editor.

"There are language barriers in literature, but I was luckily connected to a good translator and a good editor."

Among the 13 nominees, six books will be shortlisted on April 14, and the winner will be announced on May 16.

Published in 2007 in South Korea, the novel is about a modern-day Korean woman haunted by violent dreams who becomes a vegetarian. But her family and husband, in shock and disbelief, try to change her mind in forceful ways.

The book has received favorable reviews from the New York Times and other overseas media since it was translated into English last year.

She carefully evaluated that behind the book's overseas success is its universal theme.

"I think that's because the book has a story that everyone can empathize with."

Like her previous work, "The Vegetarian" is in line with her constant quest for an answer to the question of "What is human."

She said the Man Booker-nominated novel is about human violence and whether man can be a perfect being.

Despite the recent acclaim of the novel, Han said that she thinks "Human Acts," her 2014 novel on the bloody Gwangju democratic people's uprising of May 1980, better represents her view of literature. 

Translated recently in Britain and the Netherlands, the sixth full-length novel of the author has drawn as much attention as The Vegetarian.

"I'm attached to the book the most because it's my latest and I felt personal changes while writing it."

The novelist-poet is scheduled to drop her next work in the first half of this year.

"It's like a poem, a novel or an essay," she said. The book's translation was already begun by Deborah Smith, who translated "The Vegetarian" even before it was released in Korea.

"It's a story about life and death and of a city," said the author who spent about four months in Warsaw in 2014 to write the novel set in Poland. "I can't give further details because it's title has not yet been decided."

Han said she plans to remake her 2015 short novel, roughly translated into "Until a Snowflake is Melted," into a three-volume full-length novel series by next year at the latest.

"What matters to me is to keep writing stories," she said. "I don't know what kind of writer I am now, but I think I will come to know soon when I write more." (Yonhap)