“Shocking…The writing throughout is precise and spare, with not a word wasted. There are no tricks. Han holds the reader in a vice grip…The Vegetarian quickly settles into a dark, menacing brilliance that is similar to the work of the gifted Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa in its devastating study of psychological pain…The Vegetarian is more than a cautionary tale about the brutal treatment of women: it is a meditation on suffering and grief. It is about escape and how a dreamer takes flight. Most of all, it is about the emptiness and rage of discovering there is nothing to be done when all hope and comfort fails….A work of savage beauty and unnerving physicality.”

—Irish Times

“The Vegetarian is a book about the failures of language and the mysteries of the physical. Yet its message should not undermine Han’s achievement as a writer. Like its anti-protagonist, The Vegetarian whispers so clearly, it can be heard across the room, insistently and with devastating, quiet violence.”

—Joanna Walsh, The New Statesman

“[A] strange and ethereal fable, rendered stranger still by the cool precision of the prose…What is ultimately most troubling about Yeong-hye’s posthuman fantasies is that they appear to be a reasonable alternative to the world of repression and denial in which everyone around her exists.”

—Times Literary Supplement

“The Vegetarian is so strange and vivid it left me breathless upon finishing it. I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel as mouth-wateringly poetic, or as drenched in hypnotic oddities, taboos, and scandal. It seems to have been plucked out of the ether, ready-made to take us all by surprise. Exciting and compelling.”

—Lee Rourke, New Humanist

“The Vegetarian combines human violence and the possibility of innocence…[A] frightening beauty of a novel.”

—British Council Literature

“Uncanny.”

—The Australian

“Kang belongs to a generation of writers who aim to discover secret drives, ambitions, and miseries behind one’s personal destiny…[The Vegetarian] deals with violence, sanity, cultural limits, and the value of the human body as the last refuge and private space.”

—Tiempo Argentino

“[A] bloodcurdlingly beautiful, sinister story.”

—LINDA.

“The almost perverse seduction of this book originates in the poetry of the images. They are violently erotic and rather nightmarish; the novel is like a room full of large flowers, where the musky odor takes you by the throat.”

—De groene Amsterdammer

“For the fans of Haruki Murakami.”

—Gazet van Antwerpen (starred review)

“The Vegetarian has an odd kind of silent power that makes you want to finish it in one go and continue to think about it.”

—NRC Handelsblad (starred review)

“A shocking, moving, and thought-provoking novel.”

—Trouw

“Outright impressive.”

—HUMO

“One of the most impressive novels I have read recently…You need to read this book.”

—Arnon Grunberg in De Volkskrant

“The Vegetarian is exciting and original.”

—De Standaard der Letteren (starred review)

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