Fiction

THE VEGETARIAN

Han Kang

Publisher: Portobello Books

Published: 2015

Translated into English from Korean by Deborah Smith

Pages: 183, paperback

 

 

In the opening sentence of Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian’, Yeo­ng-hye is described as someone who is “completely unremarkable in every way”. And it is this ordi­nary woman who, one day, throws away all the meat from the freezer because she has had a ‘dream’ and announces that she is going to become a vegetarian. Things quickly spiral out of con­trol from there on as her husband, unable to understand her choices, drags in her whole family to try and ‘solve’ the ‘problem’. Yeong-hye’s father even tries to force a piece of pork into her mouth and she stabs herself in retaliation. But despite all the chaos that ensues, Yeong-hye’s decision remains rock solid.

 

The story is structured in three acts. The first part is about Yeo­ng-hye’s decision and her family’s reaction to it, the second mainly revolves around her artist brother-in-law who becomes increasingly obsessed with her body, and the final one is about Yeong-hye’s sister, In-hye, who tries to help Yeong-hye even as her own family is falling apart in the process.

 

‘The Vegetarian’ is disturbing. It’s a little gory too. While reading it, sometimes you will squirm, ill at ease in your own body. But it’s easily one of the best books you will ever come across. The story, with all its wild concepts and ideas, has a cer­tain appeal that makes it seem more like a work of abstract art rather than a neatly crafted fiction.

 

Thus it manages to stay in your mind long after, making you rethink and question everything you believed to be true, challenging con­formism and making you wonder why the society puts such strict code of conduct on sex when it is the very basis of evolution.

 

But think and ponder all you want, you will, at the end of the book, still struggle to make sense of it in its entirety or you will take away multiple (often contradictory) mes­sages. And it’s perhaps this churning of the story in your mind that makes this little novella so special, willing you to return to it in anticipation of a different take on it altogether this time around.