The Vegetarian: A Novel (Fiction in Translation) - Softcover

'A startling new novel... The Vegetarian is a story about metamorphosis, rage and the desire for another sort of life. It is written in cool, still, poetic but matter-of-fact short sentences, translated luminously by Deborah Smith, who is obviously a genius' -- Deborah Levy, author of Swimming Home

'The Vegetarian is hypnotically strange, sad, beautiful and compelling. I liked it immensely' -- Nathan Filer, Costa Award winning author of The Shock of the Fall

'This short novel is one of the most startling I have read. Han Kang is well served by Deborah Smith's subtle translation in this disturbing book' -- Independent on Sunday

'Elegantly translated into bone-spare English by Deborah Smith, The Vegetarian is a book about the failures of language and the symmetries of the physical. Yet its message should not undermine Han's 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' -- New Statesman

'Enthralling... 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' -- Independent

'Sensual, provocative and violent, ripe with potent images, startling colours and disturbing questions. Sentence by sentence, The Vegetarian is an extraordinary experience' --Guardian

'The Vegetarian is so strange and vivid it left me breathless upon finishing it. I don't think I've 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' -- New Internationalist

'Unsettling... A strange and ethereal fable, rendered stranger still by the cool precision of the prose' -- Times Literary Supplement

'Mind-blowing... Han skilfully builds the story. The writing throughout is precise and spare. The Vegetarian quickly settles into a dark, menacing brilliance. Deborah Smith's quiet, underplayed translation is effective at evoking a mood of suppressed dread. For all the graphic, often choreographed description, Han Kang has mastered eloquent restraint in a work of savage beauty and unnerving physicality' --Irish Times

'Unsettling... A strange and ethereal fable, rendered stranger still by the cool precision of the prose'

'[The Vegetarian is] about a madness in which the mad woman is only the subject, never the speaker. It's a novel that illustrates the patriarchal nature of South Korea in subtle, provocative ways. And it's a beautiful book about a woman who, after having a disturbing dream, decides to become a vegetarian, and ends with her transforming into a tree.'Chad W Post, Frankfurt Show Daily --Times Literary Supplement

HAN KANG was born in Gwangju, South Korea, and moved to Seoul at the age of ten. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University. Her writing has won the Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today's Young Artist Award, and the Korean Literature Novel Award. She currently teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. DEBORAH SMITH is working on a PhD in Korean literature at SOAS, University of London. She has translated The Essayist's Desk by Bae Suah, as well as short stories by Kim Kyung-uk and Kim Ae-ran.