The Vegetarian

‘I wanted to deal with the questions I had about the world and humanity in the form of three sections about two sisters crying out in silence: one who wants to stop being part of the human race, refusing to eat meat and believing she has turned into a plant, and the other who wants to hold her sister from death, conflicted and pained herself. When I write novels, I find myself trying to reach the end of the question – not an answer – which initially drew me to write it. To penetrate my questions on the meaning of being human, it was inevitable for me to go through such intense scenes and images.’

Read the full interview here.

‘This compact, exquisite and disturbing book will linger long in the minds, and maybe the dreams, of its readers.’

Daniel Hahn, The Guardian

‘This is Han Kang’s first novel to appear in English, and it’s a bracing, visceral, system-shocking addition to the Anglophone reader’s diet. It is sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colours and disturbing questions … The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience.’

Sun Yung Shin, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

‘Han’s striking language has a purity, especially when it touches into the deep melancholia that is part of South Korea’s modern inheritance, in its explorations of the psyche in flux … a remarkable novel with universal themes about isolation, obsession, duty and desire.’

Gregory Leon Miller, The San Francisco Chronicle

‘To some degree, The Vegetarian may be read as a feminist allegory, a tale of what might befall a woman who rebels against patriarchal oppression. Beyond gender, Yeong-hye’s story extends to anyone who would say no to the order of things, anyone who senses that such order is maintained by the blood of others […] an existential nightmare, as evocative a portrayal of the irrational as I’ve come across in some time.’

Laura Miller, Slate

‘The effect of Kang’s prose is difficult to convey. I’ve scoured The Vegetarian in vain for a passage to quote that will illustrate how the novel transmits a feeling of great stillness even as its characters undergo convulsions of rage, sorrow, and lust […] it has an eerie universality that gets under your skin and stays put irrespective of nation or gender.’

Claire Fallon, The Huffington Post

‘The treatment of her harmful behavior as idealistic can be somewhat troubling, even as it slowly becomes clear there’s far more behind her slow gravitation toward vegetal life; the nuance is literary, but slightly romanticized. And yet, by the end of the book, it’s clear that we’re wrong to romanticize, as The Vegetarian paints a confounding portrait of not one woman, but two damaged sisters seeking desperately to deal with the violence of living in their world.’