The Vegetarian: A Novel - Tapa blanda

'A startling new novel... The Vegetarian is a story about metamorphosis, rage and the desire for another sort of life. It is written in cool, still, poetic but matter-of-fact short sentences, translated luminously by Deborah Smith, who is obviously a genius' -- Deborah Levy, author of Swimming Home

'The Vegetarian is hypnotically strange, sad, beautiful and compelling. I liked it immensely' -- Nathan Filer, Costa Award winning author of The Shock of the Fall

'This short novel is one of the most startling I have read. Han Kang is well served by Deborah Smith's subtle translation in this disturbing book' -- Independent on Sunday

'Elegantly translated into bone-spare English by Deborah Smith, The Vegetarian is a book about the failures of language and the symmetries of the physical. Yet its message should not undermine Han's achievement as a writer. Like its anti-protagonist, The Vegetarian whispers so clearly, it can be heard across the room, insistently and with devastating, quiet violence' -- New Statesman

'Enthralling... It has a surreal and spellbinding quality, especially in its passage on nature and the physical landscape, so beautiful and so magnificently impervious to the human suffering around it' -- Independent

'Sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colours and disturbing questions. Sentence by sentence, The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience' --Guardian

'The Vegetarian is so strange and vivid it left me breathless upon finishing it. I don't think I've ever read a novel as mouth-wateringly poetic, or as drenched in hypnotic oddities, taboos and scandal. It seems to have been plucked out of the ether, ready-made to take us all by surprise' -- New Internationalist

'Unsettling... A strange and ethereal fable, rendered stranger still by the cool precision of the prose' -- Times Literary Supplement

'Mind-blowing... Han skilfully builds the story. The writing throughout is precise and spare. The Vegetarian quickly settles into a dark, menacing brilliance. Deborah Smith's quiet, underplayed translation is effective at evoking a mood of suppressed dread. For all the graphic, often choreographed description, Han Kang has mastered eloquent restraint in a work of savage beauty and unnerving physicality' --Irish Times

'Unsettling... A strange and ethereal fable, rendered stranger still by the cool precision of the prose'

'[The Vegetarian is] about a madness in which the mad woman is only the subject, never the speaker. It's a novel that illustrates the patriarchal nature of South Korea in subtle, provocative ways. And it's a beautiful book about a woman who, after having a disturbing dream, decides to become a vegetarian, and ends with her transforming into a tree.'Chad W Post, Frankfurt Show Daily --Times Literary Supplement

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.