LONDON (AP) — South Korean author Han Kang has won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction with "The Vegetarian," an unsettling novel about a woman whose decision to stop eating meat has devastating consequences.

Han beat literary stars including elusive Italian author Elena Ferrante and Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk to the 50,000-pound ($72,000) prize, awarded at a London ceremony on Monday.

Literary critic Boyd Tonkin, chairman of the judging panel, said Han's "compact, exquisite and disturbing" novel displayed an "uncanny blend of beauty and horror."

The award is counterpart to Britain's prestigious Booker Prize and is open to English translations of books published in any language.

The prize money will be split evenly between Han and her 28-year-old translator, Deborah Smith, who only began learning Korean seven years ago.