The Vegetarian
FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
“[Han Kang’s] intense poetic prose . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—The Nobel Committee for Literature, in the citation for the Nobel Prize
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST FICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY
“Ferocious.”—The New York Times Book Review (Ten Best Books of the Year)
“Both terrifying and terrific.”—Lauren Groff
“Provocative [and] shocking.”—The Washington Post
Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.
A Best Book of the Year: BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, Wall Street Journal, Time, Elle, The Economist, HuffPost, Slate, Bustle, The St. Louis Dispatch, Electric Literature, Publishers Weekly
“[Han Kang’s] intense poetic prose . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—The Nobel Committee for Literature, in the citation for the Nobel Prize
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST FICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY
“Ferocious.”—The New York Times Book Review (Ten Best Books of the Year)
“Both terrifying and terrific.”—Lauren Groff
“Provocative [and] shocking.”—The Washington Post
Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.
A Best Book of the Year: BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, Wall Street Journal, Time, Elle, The Economist, HuffPost, Slate, Bustle, The St. Louis Dispatch, Electric Literature, Publishers Weekly
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✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *The Vegetarian* by Han Kang is a dark, unsettling novel with exquisite writing and strong visuals. Many praise its exploration of control...
I certainly didn’t expect the story from its title. And chapter after chapter, it kept surprising me. Each one was unexpected, a new shock. The story is terrifying, unforgettable, and, in some strange way, familiar to me.
When I first read The Vegetarian, I felt deeply uncomfortable, while reading and even afterward. Despite liking the book, I thought I’d never want to revisit it. It took me a while to start thinking about it again, to understand what I truly felt. For me, it was the violence that made me recoil, almost leaving a trace of trauma- because that violence was also a part of myself. Those acts of brutality felt disturbingly familiar, as if they mirrored something within me.
Why is it that the vulnerable, the non-violent, cannot survive in this world?
Violence comes from desire.
As Yeong-hye gradually loses all desire until she no longer needs food, only water and sunlight, she begins to die. She asks her sister, “Why is it such a bad thing to die?”
No desire means death.
Perhaps violence is inevitable in the choice to live. And yet, the least I can do, with grace, is to be aware of that side of myself, and to try to follow the right path.
Love the strong visuals from the second section. While the protagonist looks like a rebel against her society, I was looking for a certain intensity which is missing from the book. It scratched a lot of meaningful topics but only on the surface.
Some books include graphic scenes for shock value, while others have an intrinsic need to be graphic; 'The Vegetarian' seemed to belong to the latter category for me. The narrative was visceral, unsettling, and quite direct in certain aspects, but the most notable aspect for me was how Kang drastically contradicted Yeong-joo and her brother-in-law's breaking of social conventions. Although the narrative is thematically rich and eye-catching, the third section can feel a little disjointed from the two earlier ones, although Yeong-joo's sister's radical change in personality and her increased understanding towards Yeong-joo's situation was something that I appreciated a lot.
3.5/5
3.5/5
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