The Vegetarian

AUTEUR(S): Han Kang.

TAAL: Engels.
UITGEVER: Faber and Faber (Portobello Books).
JAAR: 2015.
DRUK: Heruitgave.
FORMAAT: 198 x 129 x 13 mm.
GEWICHT: 140 gram.
STAAT: Nieuw (New).
ISBN/EAN: 9781846276033.

BESCHRIJVING

Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2016

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-hyes 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 sisters 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.