The Vegetarian by Han Kang is a work of precision and structure. Although the novel deals with emotionally charged difficulties of contemporary human existence, the storyline follows a tightly-knit sequence which almost has the impression of the inevitable.
Han Kang is a great story-teller, and The Vegetarian is a page-turner, in the literarily heavy-weight sense. The co-existence of literature of the highest caliber and the ability to attract a wide range of readers with the basic urge to read on reminds one of Dostoevsky.
The Vegetarian is a great work dealing with generic human truths, and commonly-found difficulties of the present day. The fact that the novel deals with problems of gender, abuse, social norms, and existential risks could have well turned out to be yet another example of politically correct treatise, but the result is far from so. The novel is full of pleasant surprises out of the norm.
The almost beautifully savage intellect of Han Kang has made this work the true fruit of labour of love, which hangs from a tree of life in a wild orchard where other masterpieces coming from this Korean novelists thrive half-cultivated and half-native, with yet more surprises to be uncovered.
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