La végétarienne

Kang Han

The Vegetarian (Korean: 채식주의자; RR: Chaesikjuuija) is a South Korean three-part novel written by Han Kang and first published in 2007. Based on Han's 1997 short story "The Fruit of My Woman", The Vegetarian is set in modern-day Seoul and tells the story of Yeong-hye, a part-time graphic artist and home-maker, whose decision to stop eating meat after a bloody, nightmarish dream about human cruelty leads to devastating consequences in her personal and familial life.Published on 30 October 2007 in South Korea by Changbi Publishers, The Vegetarian was received as "very extreme and bizarre" by the South Korean audience. "Mongolian Mark", the second and central part of the novel was awarded the prestigious Yi Sang Literary Prize. It has been translated into at least thirteen languages, including English, French, Spanish, and Chinese. The Vegetarian is Han's second book to be translated into English. The translation was conducted by the British translator Deborah Smith, and was published in January 2015 in the UK and February 2016 in the US, after which it received international critical acclaim, with critics praising Han's writing style and Smith's translation. In May 2016, it won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. The Vegetarian thus became the first recipient of the award after its reconfiguration in 2015, prior to which it was awarded to an author's body of work rather than a single novel. It is considered as Korean translated literature's biggest win since Kyung-Sook Shin's Please Look After Mom won the closing Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012. Prior to it winning the prize, The Vegetarian had sold close to 20,000 copies in the nine years since its first publication. In June 2016, Time included the book in its list of best books of 2016.

7 editions

French language

Published 2015

ISBN:: 979-10-94680-03-2
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Reviews

nerd teacher [books] reviewed The Vegetarian by Kang Han

I Liked the Final Story Far More

3 stars

Content warning Could have spoilers for the final story.

I want to start out with this: I don't know that this book is entirely for me. That's fine. It was still an experience to get through, and I only really started realising what the structure of the book was doing when I explained my discomfort with the first two stories to a friend and was starting on describing the beginning of the first.

To my friend, I had said: "All of these people are abusive assholes. I don't know if the sister is going to be, since I'm not done. But the husband and the brother-in-law were atrocious and disgusting." As soon as I said that, it finally clicked what was being done and the kind of message that Han Kang had wanted to transmit. And it's because the key figure, the person whose interiority we often don't have and who we're being pushed to look at as strange... is Yeong-hye. She's central to every story, but we're only allowed to follow the people harming her.

I do want to say, however, that the first story used shock value that hadn't been choreographed or foreshadowed multiple times. This includes the utilisation of suicide (which I thought this was done well despite the lack of foreshadowing, especially for the situation it is in) and two instances of animal torture and abuse (the first of which felt like it came entirely out of nowhere and was deeply frustrating, and the second was much more mild than the former but still could be upsetting). The second story involved a lot of sexual behaviours that were entirely questionable, which mostly felt discomforting because we know what the character we're following is thinking and the kind of obsessive attitude he has taken towards to object of his sexual desires. It's uncomfortable because we know what kind of tricks he's using to get what he wants and why he's treating people the way he is, which really isn't positive.

The third story, though, is her sister. Her sister isn't shown to be a good person. She's going through all the 'what if' moments and wondering where she screwed up and if she could've done better for Yeong-hye. She realises that she caused some of Yeong-hye's problems through the control she's had over her, by wanting to lock her away... and recognises that she's in the wrong. She's not presented as good but as changing. (I also like that she realises the kind of control that women are under by their husbands and the societal pressure of having children. It's woven in the story well.)