Han King - The Vegetarian (2nd Hand Paperback)
Synopsis
Winner of The Man Booker 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.
Details
- Format : Standard 2nd Hand Paperback
- Condition : Very Good
- Category : Fiction - Fiction - Uncategorised
- Published : 2015 (Portobello Books)
- ISBN : 9781846276033
- SKU : B002045
- PPC : LL250gm
- RRP : £7.99
- Quantity Available : 1 only.
External Reviews
"Although the novella tells the 'simple' story of a woman's desire to become a vegetarian, it subtly uncovers the ramifications of any decision which challenges a society's ideological investment in particular ideas . . . Why do we eat meat ? Why are people more valuable than the nature we destroy to thrive ? It is a critique of humanism but also deconstructs many other established binaries." - Google Review.
"Sentence by sentence, The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience" - The Guardian.
