The Vegetarian

Read Deborah Smith's translation or adaptation of Korean writer Han Kang's "The Vegetarian", which won international awards. Han Kang herself won the 2024 Nobel in literature. It's the first Korean novel I've read and it's pretty good.

I'm thinking that things have probably changed drastically with regard to the recognition and translation of Korean literature, now that Korean has become so internationally accepted as such a cultural powerhouse.

But I read the novel in its own right, without considering all that. It's multi-leveled; with messages about human brutality, the survival of women in a patriarchal society, the stifling of the individual within families, the mutual incomprehension between men and women, the role of sexuality in relationship, the fragility of our sanity, the lack of acceptance for neuro-diversity, the inadequacy of mental health institutions, the importance we give to art and dreams, the immanence and irresistability of nature - there's a lot going on in this slim novel.