Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2016
192 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Fraught, disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea, and the irreconcilable conflict between our two selves: one greedy, primitive; the other accountable to family and society. Winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.
Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision to embrace a more "plant-like" existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye - impossibly, ecstatically, tragically - far from her once-known self altogether.
A disturbing, yet beautifully composed narrative told in three parts, The Vegetarian is an allegorical novel about modern day South Korea, but also a story of obsession, choice, and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.
"Starred Review. This is an ingenious, upsetting, and unforgettable novel." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. In a culture in which mental illness is met too often with dismissal or denial, Kang's novel is sure to draw both scrutiny and applause, in no small part owing to London-based Smith's seamless translation. Family dysfunction amid cultural suffocation is presented with elegant precision, transforming readers into complicit voyeurs. Fans of authors as diverse as Mary Karr and Haruki Murakami won't be able to turn away." - Library Journal
"The book insists on a reader's attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair ... An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing." - Kirkus
"Dark dreams, simmering tensions, chilling violence…This South Korean novel is a feast…It is sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colors and disturbing questions…Sentence by sentence, The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience… [It] will be hard to beat." - The Guardian (UK)
"This short novel is one of the most startling I have read… Exciting and imaginative…The author reveals how nature, sex and art crash through this polite society…It is the women who are killed for daring to establish their own identity. The narrative makes it clear it is the crushing pressure of Korean etiquette which murders them…[A] disturbing book." - The Independent (UK)
"The Vegetarian is a book about the failures of language and the mysteries of the physical. Yet its message should not undermine Han's achievement as a writer. Like its anti-protagonist, The Vegetarian whispers so clearly, it can be heard across the room, insistently and with devastating, quiet violence." - The New Statesman (UK)
"[A] strange and ethereal fable, rendered stranger still by the cool precision of the prose… What is ultimately most troubling about Yeong-hye's post-human fantasies is that they appear to be a reasonable alternative to the world of repression and denial in which everyone around her exists." - Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"The Vegetarian combines human violence and the possibility of innocence...[A] frightening beauty of a novel." - British Council Literature (UK)
"Shocking...The writing throughout is precise and spare, with not a word wasted. There are no tricks. Han holds the reader in a vice grip...It is about escape and how a dreamer takes flight. Most of all, it is about the emptiness and rage of discovering there is nothing to be done when all hope and comfort fails...A work of savage beauty and unnerving physicality." - Irish Times (Eire)
"Uncanny." - The Australian (Australia)
"Kang belongs to a generation of writers that aim to discover secret drives, ambitions, and miseries behind one's personal destiny...[The Vegetarian] deals with violence, sanity, cultural limits, and the value of the human body as the last refuge and private space." -Tiempo Argentino (Argentina)
"The almost perverse seduction of this book originates in the poetry of the images. They are violently erotic and rather nightmarish; the novel is like a room full of large flowers, where the musky odour takes you by the throat." - De Groene Amsterdammer (Holland)
"Starred Review. For the fans of Haruki Murakami." - Gazet van Antwerpen (Holland)
"Starred Review. The Vegetarian has an odd kind of silent power, which makes you want to finish it in one go and continue to think about it." - nrc Handelsblad (Holland)
"Starred Review. The Vegetarian is exciting and original." - De Standaard der Letteren (Holland)
This information about The Vegetarian was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Park Jaehong
Han Kang was born in Gwangju, South Korea, in 1970. Since the age of ten, She grew up in Suyuri, Seoul after her family moved there. A recipient of the Yi Sang Literary Award, the Today's Young Artist Award, and the Manhae Prize for Literature, she is the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the International Booker Prize, Human Acts, and The White Book.
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