The Vegetarian - Winner of MAN BOOKER Prize 2016
- Han Kang (Translator: Deborah Smith) Reviewed by
- Feb 16, 2017
- 2 min read
The original written in Korean, translated into the English by Deborah Smith, The Vegetarian, is a gripping novel that is disturbing to read. A tale of psychological and physical suffering of the protagonist, Yeong-hye.
Written in three parts, each may also form stand alone stories with the same characters. Han Kang’s writing is strong, precise and evokes vivid images and scenes. Her attention to descriptions of the mundane day-to-day life of people is evocative and occupies most part of the novel. That’s how it stands out as a psychological drama.
The first part – The Vegetarian, is told in the first person, while the other two parts – Mongolian Mark, and Flaming Trees are in the omniscient third person. But for the common main characters each part could well be treated as independent stories on the same theme. By the time the story enters the third part, the schizophrenic protagonist Yeong-hye has taken vegetarianism to its extreme by not only renouncing meat, but also renouncing food of any kind imagining herself to be a plant.
This unusual topic is dealt with delicately and with understanding by the author through long flash-blacks, descriptive scenes and thinking scenes by different characters. In fact there are so frequent flash-backs and returns to the present (especially in the last part) that at some point one loses track of where one is. This she has managed through clever use of present and past tenses.
If there is another metaphorical meaning to the story, I am afraid, I didn’t get it. Even so the story is dealt with tremendous compassion towards the state of the mind of a psychiatric patient and the reader tends to see the world through the wretched suffering woman’s mind. In fact many of the characters have some or the other mental aberrations, one might wonder if it is normal to be normal.
Sensuous, erotic scenes in the middle part are played out so subtly that these can be visualised artistically with nothing sexual in them. A well deserved book for the Man Booker Prize.
