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The Vegetarian

By: Han Kang
Narrated by: Janet Song, Stephen Park
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Publisher's Summary

An irresistibly weird and sensuous story of betrayals, transformations and social taboos. 

Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more 'plantlike' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares. 

In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide and hospitalisation. She unknowingly captivates her sister's husband, a video artist. She becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks while spiralling further and further into her fantasies of abandoning her fleshly prison and becoming - impossibly, ecstatically - a tree. 

Fraught, disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is a novel about modern-day South Korea but also a novel about shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.

©2007 Han Kang. English translation copyright © Deborah Smith 2015 (P)2016 Random House Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: Erotica

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Not the Story of '0' Sadly

The Family members are Disgraceful in their Puritanical and Downright Ignorant Attitudes towards a Naive Woman who has Just Discovered the Power In Dreams and her own Flowering in the Domain of Free Will and If She had Been Allowed ,-the Reawakening in the Realm of her Sexuality. ....Bloody Sister ,what a Dropkick ! And Straightjacket for Body Painting ...? Methinks that there is more than Sexual Repression and Jealousy involved here. ..I titled the Above as I find all of the Characters in this Novel Bar the" Flower Power Painting Menage a Trois "* A bunch of Sadistic, Sinful , Sorry excuses of Humanity !
May they Rot in their Righteousness!!!🤺

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Weird and hard to follow

Maybe it was because I listened to this book but I found it hard to follow. I found some of the content creepy and uncomfortable.

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