Han Kang - The Vegetarian

A horror story in its depiction of the unknowability of othersof the sudden feeling that youve never actually known someone close to you.Its three-part structure is brilliant, gradually digging deeper and deeper into darker and darker places; the writing is spare and haunting; but perhaps most memorable is its crushing climax, a phantasmagoric yet emotionally true moment thats surely one of the years most powerful. This is an ingenious, upsetting, and unforgettable novel.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The book insists on a readers attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is. An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.

Kirkus Reviews

Like a small seed, Han Kangs 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 novels darknessdo so at your own peril.

Colin Winnette, author of Haints Stay and Coyote

A stunning and beautifully haunting novel. It seems in places as if the very words on the page are photosynthesizing. I loved this graceful, vivid book.

Jess Richards, Costa First Novel Award short-listed author of Snake Ropes

Poetic and beguiling, and translated with tremendous elegance, The Vegetarian exhilarates and disturbs.

Chloe Aridjis, author of The Book of Clouds

Dark dreams, simmering tensions, chilling violenceThis South Korean novel is a feastIt is sensual, provocative, and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colors, and disturbing questionsSentence by sentence, The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience[It] will be hard to beat.

The Guardian

This is an odd and enthralling novel; its story filled with nihilism but lyricism too, its writing understated even in its most fevered, violent moments. It has a surreal and spellbinding quality, especially in its passage on nature and the physical landscape, so beautiful and so magnificently impervious to the human suffering around it.

Arifa Akbar, The Independent

This short novel is one of the most startling I have readExciting and imaginativeThe author reveals how nature, sex, and art crash through this polite societyIt is the women who are killed for daring to establish their own identity. The narrative makes it clear it is the crushing pressure of Korean etiquette which murders them[A] disturbing book.

Julia Pascal, The Independent

ShockingThe writing throughout is precise and spare, with not a word wasted. There are no tricks. Han holds the reader in a vice gripThe 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 painThe Vegetarian 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.

Irish Times

The Vegetarian is a book about the failures of language and the mysteries of the physical. Yet its message should not undermine Hans achievement as a writer. Like its anti-protagonist, The Vegetarian whispers so clearly, it can be heard across the room, insistently and with devastating, quiet violence.

Joanna Walsh, The New Statesman

[A] strange and ethereal fable, rendered stranger still by the cool precision of the proseWhat is ultimately most troubling about Yeong-hyes posthuman fantasies is that they appear to be a reasonable alternative to the world of repression and denial in which everyone around her exists.

Times Literary Supplement

The Vegetarian is so strange and vivid it left me breathless upon finishing it. I dont think Ive 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, New Humanist

The Vegetarian combines human violence and the possibility of innocence[A] frightening beauty of a novel.

British Council Literature

Uncanny.

The Australian

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

Tiempo Argentino

[A] bloodcurdlingly beautiful, sinister story.

LINDA.

The almost perverse seduction of this book originates in the poetry of the images. They are violently erotic and rather nightmarish; the novel is like a room full of large flowers, where the musky odor takes you by the throat.

De groene Amsterdammer

For the fans of Haruki Murakami.

Gazet van Antwerpen (starred review)

The Vegetarian has an odd kind of silent power that makes you want to finish it in one go and continue to think about it.

NRC Handelsblad (starred review)

A shocking, moving, and thought-provoking novel.

Trouw

Outright impressive.

HUMO

One of the most impressive novels I have read recentlyYou need to read this book.

Arnon Grunberg in De Volkskrant

The Vegetarian is exciting and original.

De Standaard der Letteren (starred review)