LiteratureBook · 2007
The Vegetarian
Han Kang
Yeong-hye stops eating meat after a dream she will not describe, and her husband, her brother-in-law and her sister narrate the three parts in turn while she herself barely speaks. Han Kang assembled the novel from three sections that had appeared separately in Korean literary magazines, and Deborah Smith's English translation won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.
Why you should read this
This is the novel that won a major translation prize before its author went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Told across three shifting points of view, it is short, spare and often upsetting by design, and rewards readers comfortable with bodily and psychological extremity.
- Field
- Literature
- Form
- Fiction
- Published
- 2007
- Themes
- Korean LiteratureLiteratureContemporary
