The Vegetarian

FROM HAN KANG WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE “[Han Kang’s] intense poetic prose . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—The Nobel Committee for Literature in the citation for the Nobel Prize A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY “Ferocious.”—The New York Times Book Review (Ten Best Books of the Year)“Both terrifying and terrific.”—Lauren Groff“Provocative [and] shocking.”—The Washington Post. Before the nightmares began Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate subjecting first her mind and then her body to ever more intrusive and perverse violations sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous bizarre estrangement not only from those closest to her but also from herself.  Celebrated by critics around the world The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical Kafka-esque tale of power obsession and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her. A Best Book of the Year: BuzzFeed Entertainment Weekly Wall Street Journal Time Elle The Economist HuffPost Slate Bustle The St. Louis Dispatch Electric Literature Publishers Weekly