About the work
“The Vegetarian” (Korean 채식주의자) is a three-part novel by the South Korean writer Han Kang, published by Changbi in Seoul on 30 October 2007 and developed from a short story she wrote in 1997. The German translation by Ki-Hyang Lee has been available from Aufbau Verlag since 2016. Daria Deflorian adapted it for the stage in Italian in 2024; the first German-language production, directed by Marie Schleef, opened at Vienna’s Akademietheater in May 2025.
Plot
Yeong-hye, an unremarkable wife in Seoul, clears all animal products out of the flat after a bloody nightmare and stops eating meat. Her husband and family respond with incomprehension, pressure and finally open violence. The three parts, “The Vegetarian”, “Mongolian Mark” and “Flaming Trees”, show events through the eyes of the husband, of the brother-in-law, a video artist, and of the elder sister In-hye, while Yeong-hye increasingly refuses food and dreams of becoming a plant.
Cultural significance
Deborah Smith’s English translation won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, the first book to do so after the prize switched to honouring single works, and brought the novel worldwide attention; it has been translated into more than 25 languages. The middle part, “Mongolian Mark”, received the Yi Sang Literary Award in Korea, and a film adaptation followed in 2009. In 2024 Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.