Monday, September 05, 2016

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

The title of the book is completely (and I suppose purposefully) misguiding. My personal associations with vegetarianism are non-violence, cruelty-free living, and a denial of the carnivorous human instincts. And the narrative of this book is quite the opposite on all those counts. It's a very, very strange plot, headed by a most unfathomable main character and the most explicit moments one could come across in a book written by an Asian writer. It's so beyond the boundaries of what's considered normal, it became plausible in some weird dimension, and did actually move me to tears at a couple of points. A book that leaves you with a heavy heart...

No comments: