The Vegetarian by Han Kang
So it all began with a dream, a red, violent one. Where Yeong-hye (the protagonist) slowly starts a small act of being free from conventional conformity, where she first took a stand, which marks her will to refuse to eat meat. At first it seems such a small act, but this was just the beginning of her freedom. What seems first like a harmless change in diet becomes a rupture, a crack in the structure that holds her life together. Her decision to stop eating meat is not about food; it’s about control in a world that constantly demands obedience. It’s about reclaiming her freedom, and it’s about reclaiming the one thing she still owns — her body. But in a society that refuses to understand quiet defiance, even silence becomes madness. Han Kang begins with something deceptively simple, that is a dream about animal slaughter, soaked in blood and violence. But that dream awakens something primal in Yeong-hye, something that she cannot suppress. She then begins to see the world differen...
