He is not unhappy to be with her, but neither is their marriage driven by any great passion. As for women who were pretty, intelligent, strikingly sensual, the daughters of rich families they would only ever have served to disrupt my carefully ordered existence. And so it was natural that I would marry the most run-of-the-mill woman in the world. Ultimately, I settled for a job where I would be provided with a decent monthly salary in return for diligently carrying out my allotted tasks, at a company whose small size meant they would value my unremarkable skills. As the book opens, he believes his wife to be a very ordinary woman and that is the way he likes it. In the first section, Yeong-hye’s husband Mr Cheong narrates. Han Kang even seems to go as far as to suggest that this one small act of defiance can threaten the very fabric of Korean society that values conformity, family values and obedience in women above all else. Such a seemingly innocuous decision will end up having devastating consequences both for Yeong-hye herself and for her wider family members. Set in contemporary South Korea, it features a young married woman, Yeong-hye, who decides one day, out of the blue, to give up eating meat. This short novel, of three interlinked stories is a startling and unusual read.
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