The Vegetarian

The Vegetarian is a tree-part novella, each narrated by a different character. The main character is Yeon-hye, a young married woman who suffers a mental crisis and becomes a vegan in a country and family where veganism is not well-seen. Her crisis will affect all members of her family in unexpected ways, opening a box of Pandora that will varnish with emotional crisis everyone it touches. The other two major characters are her sister In-hye, and the unnamed artist In-hye's husband. The three parts are: 1/The Vegetarian = We are told the story of Yeon-hye'd through the eyes of her husband Mr Cheong, 2/Mongolian Marks = We are told the story of Yeon-hye's artist brother-in-law. 3/Flaming Trees = We are told the story of Yeon-hye through the eyes of her sister In-hye. The Vegetarian is Yeon-hye's vanishing act in three chapters as each shows a progressive deterioration of Yeon-hye's body and state of mind. The Vegetarian is also an three-way immolation: self-destruction, self-obliteration, and self-denial (Yeon, In, and the artist respectively). **************** The Vegetarian is not an easy book to read, sad, tragic and depressing but also artistic, erotic, lyric an poetic. The book has layer upon layer of meaning, and touches many different subjects that are organically intertwined, and that the reader will discover as they read along. # Some of these subjects and themes are immediately obvious: ~ The social and family structure in South Korea. ~ The objectification of women. ~ The nature of desire. ~ The nature of artistic creation. ~ The effect of trauma and the suppression of emotions on the psyche. ~ The many facets of violence in our daily dealings. From feeding somebody against their will, to emotionally using somebody disregarding their emotional needs, having intercourse with a person who is not in his right mind, or enduring life without living it fully. ~ Social and personal boundaries. # However, I see four major themes in the novel: ~ One is the seek for the real self, because that true self is what we really are, the voice in our inner speech. The closer you are to your true self and your true inner voice the healthier your state of mind. This novel shows this masterfully. . ~ The second is that reality is perception, which is tarnished by our psychological projections.What is more, reality is part o our dreams and dreams are always real no matter how fantastic and mysterious they look like. All the characters say, at certain point in the novel, that the other person is a stranger to them, or that they don't really know them, even though they are family. We can only know other people to a certain extent, even when we think we know them well. We are projecting all the time. ~ The third is mental illness. Which are the repercussions on the social network of the sick person? Where and what is the line that separates sanity from insanity? Who is most insane, the insane person whose mind exteriorises the trauma, or the sane person who cannot deal with the trauma within their own sanity? ~ The fourth is Human Nature vs. Nature. In the book, the former is equalled to violence, suffering, lack of peace, and being stuck, while the latter is equalled to peace, fluidity, happiness, movement, truthfulness, to life as in zen. In fact, the three characters develop a special relationship with Nature, Yeon-hye wants to be a tree, the artist wants to self-obliterate himself into nature through flowers, while In-hye sees trees and forest as holders of the mysteries and answers she is still to get. This links well with Korean culture and Korean connection with the forest, trees and mountains and with some ancestral animist believes that still permeate Korean culture. **************** There is a heavy presence of strong oneiric elements and moments in the novel that affect all the main characters in the book, Yeon-hye, In-hye, her husband and her son. The oneiric element works perfectly in the novel because dreams are the messengers of the psyche, they are the bed where the soul rests, the mirror of the true self, that part of the human being that is honest and says to you how you feel. Dreams are also a space where reality and non-reality mix in organic but mysterious ways. The dream is the seed of our hidden truths, of our moments of elation and those of despair and anguish. The dream is always emotional. And this is the case in the novel. We see our characters' frigid emotionality in their awaken life, but very emotional in their oneiric life. We see their dreams speaking their inner truth. However, the dream is not only an literary element here. There is a strong dream culture in South Korea, still alive nowadays. **************** Regarding influences, we Westerners have a western-centric view of the world that we project all the time, especially with successful Asian artists. We tend to see the influence of any major Western artist on any successful Asian artist who becomes popular in the West, and also a tendency to put in the same bag all those Asian artists who become popular in the West. In a way is understandable. Those are the cultural anchors we have because, when it comes to South Korea, we don't have enough knowledge of the language and culture of the country to do differently. Besides, we are reading a translation and, no matter how good the translator is, this is never the same as reading a work in its original language. What can we say about the use of language, play of words, choice of words, sentence structure and on any other linguistic characteristic that is intrinsically linked to the literary value of any literary work? Some critics with too much space to talk nonsense have made connections between Han Kang's writing and Murakami, and found all sort of Western literary influences on this book. Well, I don't see the connection with Murakami at all, mind you. The connection with The Metamorphosis could be made, albeit quite vaguely. I also have my own projections, of course. Here my mental association. The second chapter and the erotic flower theme resonated with me and brought to mind a video who I saw many-many years ago, the scene of the copulating flowers in Pink Floyd's The Wall (you can still find the clip on YouTube) because, somewhat, I found there was a similar energy, the madness, and darkness even. Han Kang has personally said in some interviews, that her work is indebted to Korean literature, that some of darkness and themes in her works are directly linked and indebted to her experience of the massacre in Gwanjiu in 1980, and that she writes from an Universal standpoint even though she is Korean. She is the daughter of a writer, grew up surrounded by books and artists, she says, but she doesn't really mention any major Western author as her major literary impromptu even when asked about this. So that should suffice to stop speculating about Western influences. **************** There are images powerfully lyric and visually artistic and cinematic in this book. One of my favourites is in the fist part, when Yeong-hye in the courtyard in the hospital with a bird in his hand.Almost like a modern painting. Or the image of In-hye reflected in the mirror with a bleeding eye. Others, on the contrary are very dramatic, shocking and horrific, like the dream with the dog. Those images will stay with you for a long time, printed in your retina long after you close the book. **************** The translation by Deborah Smith is good. Most of the book flows and that is the sort of experience we want as translators and readers to have when translating literary works. Having said that, I thought that the first part needed of a few more commas, cutting on some unnecessary wordiness and another choice of words (this being a very personal thing, of course). TWO NOTES || The Vegetarian was originally published in 2007, compiling three novelettes previously published separately. However, the story, according to Hang herself, developed organically, but turned dark, from a short story of hers "Fruits of my Woman" written in the year 2000. || The book was taken to the screen in 2009 under the direction of Woo-Seong Lim. The movie was also called The Vegetarian. TYPOS > I couldn’t get my head round it. (Locations 48-49). > natural it was to not wear clothes. (Location 1220). A WARNING This word contains explicit violence, human and animal, and explicit sex scenes. A QUERY Why was the book called Vegetarian in English is the character becomes a vegan? Was the title in Korean the same?

“Reality is wrong Dreams are for real”.-Tupac Shakur The Vegetarian a Korean novel written by Han Kang, is a story that shows the main character’s, Yong-hye, journey after deciding to become vegetarian. Though it is her story, the book only contains the points of view of the people around her. Separated into three parts, it starts with the moment she makes her decision. Told by her husband, Mr. Cheong. He describes what he thought of his wife in detail, before and after the life-changing events. Part 2, Yong-hye’s brother-in-law's point of view shows his obsession with wanting to film a certain side of Yong-hye, and now his obsession starts to affect his family. The ending of part two sets up the thoughts and feelings of the last point of view, Yong-hye’s sister In-hye. In-hye is left to care for her sister after she is abandoned by everyone around her and placed into a mental hospital. Yong-hye’s true thoughts are never shown, besides the dream she explain to her husband that started her change. Her words and actions show only a glimpse of what is going on in her head, which is hidden from the reader just like it is hidden from her family. Han Kang probably wanted to write this story to show the inner workings of a Korean family when dealing with a mental illness. In Korea, like in many other places mental illness is not easily accepted; it is even refused to be accepted by the ones affected by it. Causing a problem big or small in a relationship it's frowned upon disregarding what your parents elders and partner stays is utterly disrespectful in Korean culture if there is no love that the relationship should be treated as a business you have to play your part wanted to show how this is all destroyed by the mere action of not eating meat I enjoyed reading this sort of story after randomly coming across the short and simple plot was enough to get me started. I soon realized that it was more than what I expected to be this novel to be more than just getting to see how this affects a Korean family it shows how the people who seem the most composed on the outside are lost and a mess on the inside, whether it be from themselves or others, they can't seem to find a solution. Being referred to as insane, is just a measurement of how well you fooled others to think you were okay, because even you know you are not okay. One character who shared his confusion the most is Mr.Cheong. He was the first one that noticed the change in his wife. Knowing her as just an ordinary women who, goes along with what he says, and seeing her make a decision disregarding his opinion was a lot to handle. He wasn’t afraid to tell her that she had gone insane. His reaction to this is understandable because he knew her one way for a longtime. “If the hints of hysteria, delusion, weak nerves and so on, that I thought I could detect in what she said, ended up leading to something more?” This showed how much Mr.Cheong feared the woman he called his wife. By this point, she was a completely different person to him. The other character completely lost with the situation is In-hye, the older sister. She has known Yong-hye far longer than most, so she feels she knows who Yong-hye is. Seeing the events that happened after the family dinner just proved her wrong. Yong-hye has put on a strong face since she was little, and In-hye didn’t see through it. “Dreams...and I could let myself dissolve into them, let them take me over...but surely the dream isn’t all there is?” In-hye does not want Yong-hye to continue what she is doing. She wants to make herself believe that it is all a dream. A part of her understands Yong-hye, but the recent events can’t let her share that. The only thing she wants is for Yong-hye to go back to ‘the way she was.’ The book overall did a good job in telling the story jumping from points of views, but still getting the information the reader wants and needs. The only thing that I did not like about the book was the fact that we never got to see the point of view of Yong-hye. The only parts that we get close to hearing her thoughts is when she is describing her dreams, but that is still the husband's point of view. I wanted to know more about what she was thinking and how her mind got to this point. I feel just like the other characters, trying to find out why Yong-hye is like this, without being able to talk to her. It is amazing to think that the characters lives could all have been much different if the dream never came to Yong-hye, but I still think it would all have come to this. They don’t understand Yong-hye because they don’t know her, they only claim to. Yong-hye’s wish of being a tree shows how she dislikes being a human, and the ones around her are part of that reason. If you don’t mind the images that Yong-hye paints in the readers head, much like the images her brother-in-law draws, you can try and understand the pain Yong-he feels in her chest and how she wants to break free.

I had a difficult time processing my thoughts after reading The Vegetarian. In a 2016 interview in LitHub, Han Kang states that she sees the world as "mingled violence and beauty." She also says that she is "questioning human violence and the (im)possibility of innocence; defining sanity and madness; the (im)possibility of understanding others..." The interview helped me understand why Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and this book's incomprehensible elements. Han divided the novel into three parts, perhaps a triptych, which allows us to explore the main character, Yeong-hye, from three perspectives: Mr. Cheong, her husband; her brother-in-law, who is nameless; and Yeong-hye's sister, In-hye, the brother-in-law's wife. In the first part, Yeong-hye declares to her husband that because of a dream, she no longer wants to eat meat and is becoming a vegetarian. She violently disposes of all the meat in their home and changes her eating habits and thus, her lifestyle. Mr. Cheong is not only incredulous but downright angry. He not only solicits her family to rebuke her, but he determines that his marital right is to abuse her, rape her and further destroy her dignity since she is making choices that defy her upbringing and her husband's expectations. The second section is from the perspective of Yeong-hye's brother-in-law. The brother-in-law does not contribute financially to his household since he is a video artist developing his artistic talents. He capitalizes on Yeong-hye's vegetarianism and isolation from her husband and family to create videos that are unsettling to read, yet develop one of the central themes related to Yeong-hye's individualism or mental illness, depending on how one interprets her actions. Readers can consider some timeless themes while reading the brother-in-law's point of view. Is being a nonconformist amoral? Does every human being have a right to use their body as they see fit, even if actions are unusual? How much do societal expectations matter? In the third part, from Yeong-hye's sister, In-hye's point of view, we finally get a female perspective. In-hye begins her story segment with a traditional view of marriage and rearing children, and attempts to remediate her sister. Then, as she reflects on Yeong-hye's interactions with both her husband and In-hye's, she challenges some of her assumptions and begins to relate to Yeong-hye and the establishment with fresher perspectives. Although Yeon-hye's wishes are apparent throughout the novel, they are suppressed and devalued by the men in her life and society. As the plot develops, she takes drastic measures to control her body and not yield to others' wishes. It concerns much more than a decision not to eat meat. The reader can decide whether she is being persecuted or her bizarre behaviors require treatment.

What a strange little book. I tried to think of something in my reading experience with which to compare it and the only thing that came to mind was Kafka's The Metamorphosis, but instead of waking up to find herself transformed into a giant insect, Yeong-hye awoke one morning from a troubled dream of blood and gore and cruelty and decides to give up the eating of all flesh; to become a vegetarian. For her avidly meat-eating family, a metamorphosis into a giant cockroach might have been preferable. They are appalled and outraged. At a family gathering some time after she makes her decision, they try to force her to eat meat. Her brutal father slaps her twice and forces a piece of meat between her lips, but Yeong-hye manages to spit it out and then grabs a knife and slits her wrist. As her blood spurts out, the only one who comes to her aid is her brother-in-law, while her parents, her husband, sister, brother, and sister-in-law look on. What is wrong with these people? Well, a lot, apparently. We learn about it all from three different sources: the odious husband, the brother-in-law, and, finally, the sister. The husband's tale starts with his description of his impressions on meeting the woman who was to become his wife. To say his was underwhelmed would be an understatement. To be fair, his description of himself is just as unflattering. I laughed out loud at the husband's sardonic depictions of the two of them, but it was the only time in the book that I felt any inclination toward jocularity. As his wife of five years makes her decision to become a vegetarian, all the husband can think about is how this affects him and what his employer and their acquaintances will think. He is totally self-absorbed. The brother-in-law becomes obsessed with Yeong-hye after the incident at the family gathering. He is an artist. His medium is videos and he becomes consumed by the idea of featuring his sister-in-law's naked body in his videos. He wants to paint flowers on her body and film her. She agrees to this. His fixation then moves on to filming her having sex. He persuades a fellow artist to allow him to paint flowers on his body and to be Yeong-hye's partner, but when it comes to the point of actually engaging in sex, the partner backs out. The brother-in-law then takes over - which is what he wanted to do all along - and videotapes himself having sex with her. The sister discovers them together. The last section of the book is the sister's tale and there we learn some of Yeong-hye's back story. We learn, for example, that she was an abused child. She was the middle child with her older sister and younger brother, and her father took out his rage on her. Her sister feels guilty that she did not do more to protect her or support her. Through the sister's eyes, we see Yeong-hye descending from a healthy vegetarianism into anorexia. She goes from refusing to eat meat to, finally, refusing to eat, period. She is diagnosed with a mental illness and hospitalized. Her husband divorces her. Her parents and brother abandon her. The only one who stands by her in the end is her sister. Yeong-hye is slowly starving herself to death, even as her sister tries to pull her back and persuade her to eat. She dreams of transforming herself into a tree. Finally, she asks her sister who is trying to persuade her to live, "Why, is it such a bad thing to die?" In Korean society, where societal mores are expected to be strictly obeyed, her decision to become a vegetarian and live a more plant-based life is seen as an act of subversion. This disturbing novel should evidently be read as an allegory about modern life in Korea, and about obsession and the choices we make, as well as our stumbling attempts to try to understand each other. This is an impressive bit of story-telling by a very talented writer. Just a note also about the translator: I read this book in English and it was a thoroughly lithe and graceful translation. The translator was Deborah Smith and she, too, is an artist.

This novel is composed of three interrelated novellas. Yeong-hye and her husband are living a normal life. Then Yeong-hye starts having violent nightmares, dreams of blood and brutality. She is desperate to find a way to stop the nightmares as they start affecting her waking hours with lack of sleep and a racing mind. She decides that she will give up eating meat. It seems a small thing. Her husband eats his breakfast and lunch elsewhere so it is no hardship to give up meat for one meal. He often has business dinners as well so it is even less of a hardship. But Yeong-hye's family is concerned as she loses weight. Her mother and sister beg her to go back to the way she ate before. Her father tries to use his paternal power and force her to eat. All it does is drive a wedge between Yeong-hye and her family. When her husband decides to work on his art, he has a vision of what he wants to paint. He asks Yeong-hye's sister to be his model and eventually a friend of his. He has a vision of flowers occupying the world and paints them on his models and on himself. This obsession leads to a further tearing apart of his marriage. In the final novella, time has moved on. Yeong-hye has been hospitalized in a mental hospital from which it is unlikely that she will ever leave. Her marriage is gone, her family relations left far behind. Han Kang is a South Korean author. This novel won the International Booker Prize in 2016 and the Novel Prize For Literature in 2024. It is an examination of how violence pervades society, even in the food we eat. When one chooses a different way, it challenges society and there are consequences. The novel also examines mental health and how it is treated. It portrays a patriarchal society where women are subservient to men, both in family life and in the outside world. This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.

Well written and translated. The Story is an interesting enough story, with the window on mental health in Korea. I gave it a three-star rating because the characters were annoying and not quite believable.

Please understand this book is not about vegetarianism. This is just a concept to launch the book’s themes, which are numerous and probably too many to be explored in this small novel. I love literature. I don’t like pornographic, sexually explicit literature where that sexual explicitness just so turns you off that you can’t absorb the messages and other themes. Firstly, it is very hard to have any sympathy or empathy for the vegetarian as she is given no inner life in this book aside from short descriptions of her dreams in the first part of the book. And that may be the whole point of the story… But she has no inner life or outer voice. The second part of the book made me seethe with rage, which may also be the point of that part of the book… Is it a condemnation of art and pornography? Can art really justify itself when the means are so terrible? Or is the author indicating that art is always pure, no matter the means, and that the more difficult it is to get through the art and put the art down in physical form, the more valuable it is ? That exploiting, female nudity and sexuality is always justified because it creates so-called great art? That understanding the human condition and sexuality can only be done if a woman is nude and exploited? That a woman’s worth and sexuality is in her body and not in her soul? Is one men’s catharsis via art Worth the shackles he puts on another or the degradation he puts another through to achieve that catharsis? The brother-in-law is the absolute worst. He rapes both his wife and his sister-in-law. Many are angry at the husband of the vegetarian, but he is the more mundane misogynist, the one we all know and recognize instantly. Nothing to fear there and his actions are predictable. The brother-in-law! He’s the misogyny that is hidden. The portrayal of the psychiatric center was at once intimate, empathetic, but also unrealistic. A lot of old “psychiatric wing” tropes there. I had the most sympathy for the sister. I identified with her a lot and I felt that this was the most empathetic and most interesting part of the book — Womanhood, motherhood, wifehood, sisterhood, personhood — and held the key to maybe understanding the book the most… Except after reading to the end of a page, I turned that page only to discover that the novel was over and I was like … WTF?

“Before my wife turned vegetarian, I'd always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way. To be frank, the first time I met her I wasn't even attracted to her. Middling height; bobbed hair neither long nor short; jaundiced, sickly-looking skin; prominent cheekbones; her timid, sallow aspect told me all I needed to know.” “I told myself that even though the woman I was living with was a little odd, nothing particularly bad would come of it. I thought I could get by perfectly well just thinking of her as a stranger, or no, as a sister, or even a maid, someone who puts food on the table and keeps the house in good order. But it was no easy thing for a man in the prime of his life, to have his physical needs go unsatisfied.” “My father-in-law shouted at Yeong-hye. "Don't you understand what your father's telling you? If he tells you to eat, you eat!" I expected an answer from my wife along the lines of "I'm sorry, Father, but I just can't eat it," but all she said was "I do not eat meat", clearly enunciated, and seemingly not in the least bit apologetic.” “His is flat palm cleaved the empty space and my wife cupped her cheek in her hand. I'd known of his incredibly violent temperament for some time, but it was the first time I witnessed him strike someone. My father-in-law mashed the pork to a pulp on my wife's lips as she struggled in agony. He flew into a passion again, striking her in the face once more. In the instant that the force of the slap knocked my wife's mouth open he managed to jam the pork in.” ************ Cast of Characters: Yeong-hye, the vegetarian Mr. Cheong, husband of the vegetarian Yeong-ho, brother of the vegetarian Wife of Yeong-ho, unnamed In-hye, sister of the vegetarian Husband of In-hye, unnamed Father of the vegetarian, unnamed Mother of the vegetarian, unnamed ************ Han Kang, 2024 Nobel Literature Prize Laureate, presents the deceptively simple story of a Korean family’s reaction when their daughter changes and no longer conforms to what is expected. Awakening from a disturbing dream, she gives up meat and empties the freezer of bones, blood and flesh; of pig, cow, fish and fowl. She transforms from the submissive provider of domestic comfort that her husband has come to rely on. Refusing to have sex on the grounds he smells like meat, she grows gaunt, stays up late watching serial dramas, stops wearing make-up and discards shoes and bags made of leather. Worse than her diet and fashion surprises, such as not wearing uncomfortable brassieres to his office functions, is her insistence on absolute candor in social circumstances. Alarmed by his wife Yeong-hye’s abrupt changes, Cheong entreats his sister-in-law In-hye and mother-in-law to intervene. They hold a family dinner where Cheong’s father-in-law is enraged and beats her. She is taken to a hospital after an attempted suicide and personality crisis. Cheong becomes attracted to In-hye, a practical homemaker and breadwinner, even though they are inconveniently related, and abandons Yeong-hye. The husband of In-hye, an avante-garde video artist, has fantasies about a birthmark on Yeong-hye’s buttocks and casts her in a erotic film. She is a cipher, seemingly aloof to everything around her but willing to act out her suddenly unconventional life. When fantasy collides with reality more unpleasant situations occur, with one of the main characters committed to a mental health facility. The story begins as viewed through the eyes of Yeong-hye’s husband Cheong, interspersed with her nightmares, continues in the narration of her unnamed brother-in-law and concludes with In-hye’s account of the aftermath. ‘The Vegetarian’ explores the tensions between stubborn traditions and changing norms in present day Seoul. Han Yeong-hye and the other women are viewed through male perspectives, often critical and complicated by the decline of sexual desire into grotesque parody. Han serves up a heady stew of social satire and feminist horror in a post-modernist jjigae of family values. This is the first book I have read in a very long time that has fictional sex in it. It’s tastefully done and easily digestable, and yet more vegetarian fare is on the menu in ‘Human Acts’, her 2014 novel about South Korea’s Tiananmen Square of 1980.

A fascinating read. Very different to anything I've read before. I had no idea where it was headed and had to keep turning the pages on a very strange and tragic journey. Explores some pretty deep and dark themes - mental illness, anorexia, and the way we relate to people who make choices that are different to ours. A difficult but rewarding read.

The first reading I had from this author. Fabulous and deep. It is about the choice. It is also about the human nature. The choice that goes beyond the extreme. After this, I bought other books from the same author. Warmly recommended.

No es un libro fácil; he ido leyéndolo un poco despacio, pero creo que por eso es tan bueno. La historia parte de una decisión aparentemente simple (dejar de comer carne) y la convierte en algo mucho más profundo, oscuro y perturbador. Es una historia incómoda, incluso "violenta" por momentos, pero escrita con una sensibilidad y una belleza muy poco comunes. La estructura en tres partes, contada desde distintos puntos de vista, hace que la protagonista resulte casi inalcanzable, lo que refuerza esa sensación de extrañeza constante. Más que una novela “sobre vegetarianismo”, es una reflexión sobre el cuerpo, el control, la identidad y la incapacidad de entender a los demás. No es para todo el mundo, pero si conectas con ella, es una muy buena lectura.

For a used book, this was totally fine for me. There are a few small creases from previous use and a slight stain, but nothing major. It’s still readable and original, I’m happy with it.

This review is only for the quality of the print..the paperback is of very poor quality. The cover is not even cut to size! For 17sgd its not atall worth the money