The Vegetarian: Winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature - Softcover

Kang, Han

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846276039 ISBN 13: 9781846276033

Publisher: Granta Books, 2015

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

'A strange, painfully tender exploration of the brutality of desire indulged and the fatality of desire ignored... Exquisite' Eimear McBride

Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people - dutiful wife and mild-mannered office worker. One day, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian. But in South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, it is a shocking act of subversion.

Yeong-hye's passive rebellion rapidly manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, from sexual sadism to attempted suicide, and in increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, as all the while she spirals further into her fantasies...

Disturbing and beautiful by turns, The Vegetarian is a revelatory novel about modern day South Korea; a tale of shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others.

About this title

About the Authors

Han Kang was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Gwangju, South Korea, she moved to Seoul at the age of ten. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University. Her writing has won the Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today's Young Artist Award, and the Korean Literature Novel Award. The Vegetarian, her first novel to be translated into English, was published by Portobello Books in 2015 and won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. She is also the author of Human Acts (Portobello, 2016) and The White Book (Portobello, 2017). She is based in Seoul.

Deborah Smith grew up in Doncaster. She has translated Korean books by Han Kang, Bae Suah, and Kim Haeja. In 2015 she founded Tilted Axis Press to publish anti-colonial translations from across Asia. She has lived in north India since 2020 and is slowly learning her daughter's mother tongue. She writes on translation, whiteness, class, and sick women.

From the Back Cover

Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people - dutiful wife and mild-mannered office worker. One day, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian. But in South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, it is a shocking act of subversion.

Yeong-hye's passive rebellion rapidly manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, from sexual sadism to attempted suicide, and in increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks,

From the Inside Flap

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-hye's 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 sister's 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1846276039
• ISBN 13: 9781846276033
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192