When a person undergoes such a drastic transformation, there's simply nothing anyone else can do but sit back and let them get on with it.
--Han Kang, The Vegetarian (translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith), Hogarth, 2017
No translation is ever good enough. Few Korean novels have been as successful in the West as The Vegetarian but could that be because it is a mistranslation, as some have contended (see Jiayang Fan's article in the Jan. 15th New Yorker)? And how does one tell, if one is not completely fluent in both Korean and English? All I can say is that The Vegetarian, in translation, comes across as powerful and effective, something of a fable and a parable that works on multiple levels: a comment on Korean history as well as human passion.
The novel is about Yeong-hye's refusal to eat meat and then a refusal to eat anything at all. There are three parts: one from the point of view of her husband, written in the first person; one from the point of view of her brother-in-law and one, after she is hospitalized, from the point of view of her sister (the second two are both in the third person). I see some of the same issues here that I see in Korean television and Korean films, especially those of Hong Sangsoo: the roles of men and women in family, marriage, society and an emphasis on passivity as a kind of desperate action. There are frightening dreams, strange sexual encounters, bodies painted with flowers from head to toe and the continual struggle between individuality and conformity, all expressed in lucid prose.
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