The Vegetarian
About this book
Winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize
Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more 'plant-like' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares. In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide and hospitalisation. She unknowingly captivates her sister's husband, a video artist. She becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, while spiralling further and further into her fantasies of abandoning her fleshly prison and becoming - impossibly, ecstatically - a tree.
Fraught, disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea, but also a novel about shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.
Publishers
- English (UK & Commonwealth): Granta
- Albanian: Onufri
- Azerbaijan: Qanun
- Bulgarian: Enthusiast
- Chinese: Beijing Xiron
- Czech: Euromedia
- Dutch: Nijgh & Van Ditmar
- Estonian: SA Kultuurileht
- Galician: Rinoceronte
- Georgian: Sulakauri
- Greek: Kastaniotis
- Hungarian: Jelenkor
- Japanese: Cuon
- Kurdish: Peyk Books
- Lithuanian: Vaga
- Macedonian: Art Connect Publishing
- Mongolian: Monsudar
- Nepali: Book Hill
- Polish: Grupa Wydawnicza Foksal
- Romanian: Art Grup
- Russian: AST
- Slovene: Mladinska
- Spanish: PRH
- Taiwanese: Azoth
- Thai: Amarin
- Turkish: April
- Urdu: Pakistan Publishing House
About the author & agent
Other titles by Han Kang
