"The Vegetarian" by Han Kang

Winner of the 2016 International Booker Prize by the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature.

A bizarre dream persuades Yeong-Hye to become a vegan, alienating family and friends. After a dreadful family dinner-party, she attempts suicide and is taken to a mental hospital. On her release, her brother-in-law, a video artist becomes obsessed with her and, once again, things spiral out of control.

This short book is divided into three parts. The first is narrated by  Yeong-Hye's husband, an executive working long hours for promotion, whose main concern is how his wife's idiosyncracies will be perceived, and how they will affect him. The second part is narrated by the brother-in-law as he seeks to defuse his obsession with Yeong-Hye's birthmark by creating a piece of art; inevitably he goes too far. Yeong-Hye's sister, the owner of a successful shop, narrates the final part as she struggles to understand what has happened to the family. In this final part the narrative is fragmented and jumps around in time, as if to symbolise the confusion of mental illness. The story is told in the past tense throughout.

There are some remarkable and original descriptions, some of which I have included in the Selected Quotes below.

An eloquent exploration of individuality in a conformist society.

Selected quotes:

• “The loneliness of this cruel season began to make itself felt, seeping from the black opening of the ventilation fan above the bath, leaching out of the white tiles covering the floor and walls.” (1: The Vegetarian)
• “Her lips stained with blood like clumsily applied lipstick.” (1: The Vegetarian)
• “She watches the streaks of rain lashing the windows, with the untouched steadiness unique to those accustomed to solitude.” (3: Flaming Trees)
• “There is something battened down about the woods in this torrential rain, like a huge animal suppressing a roar.” (3: Flaming Trees)
• “The road gradually narrows and becomes winding, bringing the wet body of the woods undulating nearer.” (3: Flaming Trees)
• “His silence had the heavy mass of rock and the tenacious resistance of rubber.” (3: Flaming Trees)
• “The old bark on its lower part is dark as a drenched evening.” (3: Flaming Trees)
• “She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure.” (3: Flaming Trees)

December 2024; 183 pages

Originally published as three separate novellas starting in 2000 and then assembled into a single novel in 2007 in South Korea.

My edition was translated by Deborah Smith and published by Granta in the UK in 2018

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God