The Vegetarian: A Novel By Han Kang (Paperback, 2015)

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Yeong-hye & her husband are ordinary people He is an office worker with moderate ambitions & 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 & societal mores are strictly obeyed Yeong-hye's decision is a shocking act of subversion Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre & frightening forms leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide & hospitalisation She unknowingly captivates her sister's husband a video artist She becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic & unhinged artworks while spiralling further & further into her fantasies of abandoning her fleshly prison & becoming
- impossibly ecstatically
- a tree Fraught disturbing & beautiful The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea but also a novel about shame desire & our faltering attempts to understand others from one imprisoned body to another