Lee Seung-u

Among Lee’s works, only full-length novels have been translated into English and French, but he has published a great number of short story collections in the past three decades, due to the climate of the Korean literary world in which a writer’s capacity is evaluated mostly through short stories published in literary journals.

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, the 2008 Nobel Laureate for Literature, has a deep affection for Korean literature. During his year-long stay in Korea as a visiting professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, he held book readings with Korean authors on several occasions. At the press conference after the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony, he stated that “Korean literature is quite worthy of the Nobel Literature Prize,” and that “Personally, I would say that Lee Seung-u is one of the likely Korean candidates for the prize.”

Lee's literary career started with his novel A Portrait of Erysichton, which was triggered by his shock at the assassination attempt of Pope Paul II in 1981. This work received the New Writers Award from Korean Literature Monthly. In 1993 Lee's The Reverse Side of Life was awarded the 1st Daesan Literary Award and he has also received he East West Literature Prize for I Will Live Long, the Contemporary Literature Award for Fiction and the Hwang Sun-won Literary Award.

Lee Seung-u (Korean: 이승우 , born 21 February 1959) is a South Korean writer.

Lee Seung-u was born in Jangheung, Jeollanam-do in 1959. Lee Seung-u graduated from Seoul Theological University and studied at Yonsei University Graduate School of Theology. One of the outstanding writers to have emerged in South Korea after the political repression of the 1980s, he is today professor of Korean Literature at Chosun University.