The Vegetarian - Novels

Fifteen years after its original release, Han Kang’s full-length novel 'The Vegetarian,' which expanded the presence of Korean literature by winning the 2016 International Booker Prize, is reintroduced with a new design. This work, which presents the intense fusion of a wounded soul’s pain with vegetal imagination through a precise structure and gripping style, is a masterpiece that completes the aesthetics of eerie beauty in a way only Han Kang can. Praised as a 'solid, intricate, and shocking work that will linger in the minds—and perhaps even the dreams—of readers,' 'The Vegetarian' earned the International Booker Prize. The 'New York Times' noted that it would 'resonate with readers while causing a stir in the American literary world,' while 'The Guardian' commented that 'the combination of astonishingly beautiful prose with incredibly violent content is shocking.' The novel continued to receive global acclaim, winning the San Clemente Literary Prize in Spain in 2018, among other accolades. In Korea, it has sold nearly one million copies to date.

'The Vegetarian' centers around Yeong-hye, who one day refuses to eat meat, sparking conflicts with her family. However, the novel is narrated from the perspectives of three people around her—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—and Yeong-hye never assumes the role of a dominant narrator. The novel explores patriarchal violence enacted in the name of family, and Yeong-hye’s resistance to this violence, expressed through fasting and her desire to shed her animalistic nature to become a tree, embodies a level of vegetal imagination that will resonate deeply with readers across generations.

• TITLE : The Vegetarian
• AUTHOR : HAN KANG
• PUBLISHER : 창비
• LANGUAGE : Korean
• COUNTRY OF ORIGIN : South Korea
• PUBLICATION DATE : 2023-03-28
• ISBN13 : 9788936434595
• ISBN10 : 8936434594
• PAGE : 276p