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-hyes 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 sisters 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