A beautiful, unsettling novel in three acts, about rebellion and taboo, violence and eroticism, and the twisting metamorphosis of a soul.

** Prize News: 17 May 2016 - Winner - The Man Booker International Prize 2016 **


** Prize News: 13 April 2016 - The Man Booker International Prize 2016, Shortlist Announced **


** Prize News, March-10 : The Vegetarian longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize **



Translated by Deborah Smith

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.

이 도서의 일본어판은 菜食主義者 (ハンガン 著 |むふな 譯 |クオン 출판 |2011.05.01 발행 | ISBN 9784904855027) 이며 프랑스어판은 La Vegeetarienne (Han, Kang 지음 | Poche 출판 | 2016.04.14 발행 | ISBN 9782253067900) 입니다

‘[A] heady, unsettling novel... Kang writes in a coolly unsentimental style, and achieves a delicate balance of restraint and passion in a story pulsing with desire, betrayal and destruction. Haunting’ Mireille Juchau

‘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

‘The Vegetarian is hypnotically strange, sad, beautiful and compelling. I liked it immensely’ Nathan Filer, author

‘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. Exciting and compelling’ Lee Rourke

‘A fine novel’ David Hebblethwaite

‘A strange, painfully tender exploration of the brutality of desire indulged and the fatality of desire ignored... Exquisite’ Eimear McBride, Baileys Women's Prize-winning author

‘A stunning and beautifully haunting novel. It seems in places as if the very words on the page are photosynthesising. I loved this graceful, vivid book’ Jess Richards, author

‘A transformative fable about desire, frustration and individual will’ Best Books of 2015

‘An irresistibly weird and sensuous story’ Daniel Hahn, Books of the Year

‘Brutal and beautiful - the translation alone is a work of art - this is a book for anyone who believes that the novel's job is to turn its reader inside out’ Eimear McBride, ‘Summer Read’

‘Considering this book just as a story about a vegetarian is a mistake. It is rather a meticulously constructed and haunting novel. Right at the moment you turn the last page, you'll feel grateful for your ordinary life’ Kyung-Sook Shin, Man Asian Literary Prize-winning author

‘Disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is translated by Deborah Smith into poetic yet matter-of-fact prose’ Richard Eves

‘Elegantly translated into bone-spare English by Deborah Smith... The Vegetarian whispers so clearly, it can be heard across the room, insistently and with devastating, quiet violence’ Joanna Walsh

‘Entrancing and tense... the writing is spare and haunting... its crushing climax, a phantasmagoric yet emotionally true moment that's surely one of the year's most powerful... [This is] an ingenious, upsetting, and unforgettable novel’ Publishers Weekly (starred review)

‘Fascinating and powerful. A really engrossing read’

‘Han Kang's vivid and at times violent storytelling will wake up even the most jaded of literary palates’

‘Immediately absorbing...It's the kind of story where every word matters’ Lesley McDowell

‘In The Vegetarian Han Kang ruthlessly targets South Korea's social codes, using the story of a simple, personal rebellion to expose a callous patriarchy. Sharply ironic’ Ruairi Casey

‘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. Sentence by sentence, The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience. [It] will be hard to beat’ Daniel Hahn

‘Kang belongs to a generation of writers that aim to discover secret drives, ambitions, and miseries behind one's personal destiny... [The Vegetarian] deals with violence, sanity, cultural limits, and the value of the human body as the last refuge and private space’

‘Like a small seed, Han Kang's startling and unforgettable debut goes to work quietly, but insistently. Her prose is so balanced, so elegant and assured, you might overlook the depths of this novel's darkness - do so at your own peril’ Colin Winnette, author

‘Poetic and beguiling, and translated with tremendous elegance, The Vegetarian exhilarates and disturbs’ Chloe Aridjis, author

‘Shocking... The writing throughout is precise and spare, with not a word wasted. There are no tricks. Han holds the reader in a vice grip... The Vegetarian quickly settles into a dark, menacing brilliance that is similar to the work of the gifted Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa in its devastating study of psychological pain... [It] is more than a cautionary tale about the brutal treatment of women: it is a meditation on suffering and grief. It is about escape and how a dreamer takes flight. Most of all, it is about the emptiness and rage of discovering there is nothing to be done when all hope and comfort fails... A work of savage beauty and unnerving physicality. Mind-blowing’ Eileen Battersby

‘Subtle, provocative... a beautiful book’ Chad W Post

‘This off-kilter novel from Korea is simultaneously beautiful and sinister’

‘This short novel is one of the most startling I have read. Kang is well served by Deborah Smith's subtle translation in this disturbing book’ Julia Pascal

‘Unsettling... [a] strange and ethereal fable, rendered stranger still by the cool precision of the prose’ Peter Brown

‘Visceral and terrifying, The Vegetarian is a startling reminder of the utter unknowability of another's mind. Nonetheless, reading it, you will feel it in your flesh: the desire for peace, a plea for safety, for escape from your own inevitable mortality. It is artfully plotted yet reads like a fever dream, sweeping and surreal. It will leave you aching’ Sarah Gerard, author