The Vegetarian

About

Yeong-hye's husband considers their marriage acceptable — moderate, dutiful, flat. Then Yeong-hye stops eating meat. No explanation, no negotiation, just refusal. The decision detonates through her family and her marriage with a force that reveals how much control everyone assumed they had over her body and her compliance. Told in three parts from three perspectives — none of them Yeong-hye's own — the novel traces the escalating consequences of a woman's quiet no. Han Kang's International Booker Prize winner is a novel about violence disguised as concern, about the body as contested territory, and about what happens when a woman decides her life belongs to her. The prose is spare, precise, and increasingly surreal. A book that begins with a dietary choice and ends somewhere far stranger — and far more disturbing — than anyone expected.

Awards

• ★International Booker Prize(2016 - Winner)