Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and the International Booker Prize: reading with and against world literary prestige

In 2016, the English-language translation of Han Kang’s 2007 novel The Vegetarian was awarded the Booker group’s International Prize for fiction. Although reviewers have tended to interpret the novel’s plot pessimistically, as a perilous descent into starvation, literary critics have argued that The Vegetarian dramatises an ecofeminist refusal of carnism and patriarchy. Yet both of these interpretations neglect crucial textual and extra-textual features of Han’s novel. In fact, the text’s generic and narrative ambiguities on the one side, and its celebrated position within contemporary world literary publishing culture on the other, suggest that there are limits to reading The Vegetarian as a radically posthumanist tale of becoming-plant. This essay therefore reconsiders The Vegetarian in light of its narrative form and its incorporation into the world literary canon. By doing this I will not only complicate existing close readings of Han Kang’s work. I will also develop literary-sociological analyses of prize-giving and the publishing industry, while at the same time interrogating the extent to which contemporary literature challenges and becomes folded into global capital.