The Vegetarian
Han Kang's The Vegetarian, first published in Korean in 2007 and translated into English by Deborah Smith in 2015, won the International Booker Prize and introduced an English-speaking audience to one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary world literature. The novel is told in three movements, each from a different perspective, and circles a young Seoul woman named Yeong-hye whose quiet refusal to eat meat after a violent dream becomes the center around which her entire family disintegrates. The first part is narrated by her husband, an unremarkable office worker who experiences his wife's choice as a personal humiliation. The second is told from the point of view of her brother-in-law, an artist whose obsessive desire to paint flowers on her body collapses the boundary between art and predation. The third is given to her sister In-hye, who watches Yeong-hye starve in a psychiatric ward and begins to understand what her sister has been trying to refuse. Han writes about bodies, hunger, violence, and the slow work of becoming nonhuman with a calm, almost surgical attention. The Vegetarian is short, strange, and unforgettable, a novel about how thoroughly a society can punish a woman who simply opts out.
Where The Vegetarian keeps showing up
Six of our editors' lists feature this novel.
Books in conversation with The Vegetarian
A few of the closest reads from our full list.
What you might want to know about The Vegetarian
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
After a violent dream, Seoul housewife Yeong-hye empties her refrigerator of meat one night and quietly stops eating it. The novel is told in three parts by her bewildered husband, her video-artist brother-in-law who fixates on her body, and her older sister In-hye, as Yeong-hye pulls further away.
Yes. The Vegetarian won the 2016 International Booker Prize. Han Kang later won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first South Korean author to win.
The Vegetarian uses three sections each from a different perspective on the protagonist Yeong-hye, who decides to stop eating meat. The narrative becomes increasingly disturbing and surreal. Most readers find it unsettling rather than difficult stylistically.
The Vegetarian was written by Han Kang, published in 2007 by Hogarth.
The Vegetarian is 190 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Vegetarian takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
The Vegetarian is a standalone novel by Han Kang, not part of a series.
The Vegetarian is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
