Anton Hur was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and was subsequently raised in six different countries on four different continents including British Hong Kong, Ethiopia, the United States of America, and Thailand, but mostly in Korea. An ambitious if somewhat mediocre a student, he studied Law at Korea University (with a second major in Psychology), French at the National Open University of Korea, and English at Seoul National University Graduate School where he specialised in Victorian poetry. While serving in the Korean Army, he earned the title of Person of Distinguished Service to the Nation after a construction accident broke two of his vertebrae and all of his heel bones. He has worked as a simultaneous interpreter and translator for over two decades, and as a literary translator won virtually every grant available for literary translation in his language combination including the PEN Translates, PEN/Heim, Daesan, and numerous LTI Korea grants. In 2022, he was double-longlisted and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, the first translator of colour to do so. A compulsive hobbyist, he has a black belt in Haidong Kendo (a Korean swordfighting martial art), plays the trumpet badly and the piano even worse, knows just enough knitting to have finished several scarves, and is a chaotic reader with several books going on at once. He divides his time between Seoul and the science fiction-y island of Songdo with his husband. He’d like a cat, but his husband is allergic. They have plants instead.

Twitter: @AntonHur
Instagram: @antonhur
Website: antonhur.com