The Vegetarian by Han Kang

 The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith

"Kang belongs to a generation of writers who aim to discover secret drives, ambitions, and miseries behind one's personal destiny [The Vegetarian] deals with violence, sanity, cultural limits, and the value of the human body as the last refuge and private space."

-Tiempo Argentino

1- The Vegetarian

" Before my wife turned vegetarian, I'd always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way." Page 11

"I had a dream. "

"Her voice was surprisingly clear. " page 16

"Dark woods. No people. The sharp pointed leaves on the trees, my torn feet. this place, almost remembered, but I'm lost how. Frightened. Cold. Across the frozen ravine, a red barn-like building Straw matting flapping limp across the door. Roll it up and I'm inside, it's inside. A long bamboo stick strung with great blood-red gashes of meat, blood still dripping down. Try to push past but the meat, there's no end to the meat, and no exit. Blood in my mouth, blood-soaked clothes sucked onto my skin.

Somehow a way out. Running, running through the valley, then suddenly the woods open out. Trees thick with leaves, springtime's green light. Families picnicking, little children running about, and that smell, that deli-cious smell Almost painfully vivid. The babbling stream, people spreading out rush mats to sit on, snacking on kimbap.  Barbecuing meat, the sounds of singing and happy laughter.

But the fear. My clothes still wet with blood. Hide, hide behind the trees. Crouch down, don't let anybody see. My bloody hands. My bloody mouth. In that barn, what had I done? Pushed that red raw mass into my mouth, felt it squish against my gums, the roof of my mouth, slick with crimson blood.

Chewing on something that felt so real, but couldn't have been, it my face, undoubtedly, but never couldn't. My face, the look in my eyes. seen before. Or no, not mine, but so familiar... nothing makes sense. Famil-iar and yet not... that vivid, strange, horribly uncanny feeling." Page 20

"Have I done something wrong?"

I prized open her clenched right hand. A bird, which had been crushed in her grip, tumbled to the bench. It was a small white. eye bird, with feathers missing here and there. Below tooth marks that looked to have been caused by a predator's bite, vivid red bloodstains were spreading." Page 60

2- Mongolian Mark

however much he thought back on it, he couldn't convince himself that it has actually happened-it was more like en scene from some bizarre play. page 74

The only thing that was especially unusual about her was that she didn't eat meat. This had been a source of friction with her family from the start, and since her behavior after this initial change had grown increasingly strange-culminating in her wan-dering around topless her husband had decided that her vegetarianism was proof that she would never be "normal" again.

"She was always so submissive-outwardly, at any rate. And for a woman who wasn't quite all there to start with to be taking medication every day, well, she's bound to get worse, and that's all there is to it."page 77

"When it was all over, she was crying. He couldn't tell what these tears meant-pain, pleasure, passion, disgust, or some in-scrutable loneliness that she would have been no more able to explain than he would have been to understand. He didn't know." Page 89

"Only then did he realize what it was that had shocked him when he'd first seen her lying prone on the sheet. This was the body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire, and yet it was a body from which all desire had been eliminated. But this was nothing so crass as carnal desire, not for her - rather, or so it seemed, what she had renounced was the very life that her body represented. The sunlight that came splintering through the wide window, dissolving into grains of sand, and the beauty of that body that, though this was not visible to the eye,was also ceaselessly splintering … the overwhelming inexpressibility of the scene beat against him like a wave breaking on the rocks, alleviating even those terrifyingly unknowable compulsions that had caused him such pain over the past year." Page 92-3

"Why is it you don't eat meat? I've always wondered, but somehow I couldn't ask." She lowered her chopsticks and looked across at him. "You don't have to tell me if it's difficult for you," he said, fighting all the time to suppress the sexual images that were run-ning through his head.

"No," she said calmly. "It isn't difficult. It's just that I don't think you'd understand." She raised her chopsticks again and slowly chewed some seasoned bean sprouts." It's because of a dream I had." Page 97-8

3- Flaming Trees

"You're going to Ch'ukseong Psychiatric Hospital, right?" page 129

"Look, sister, I'm doing a handstand, leaves are growing out of my body. roots are sprouting out of my hands... they delve down into the earth. End-yes, I spread my legs because I wanted flowers to bloom lessly, endlessly from my crotch, I spread them wide ... " page 133

It wasn't long before she realized something: perhaps the one she'd so earnestly wanted to help was not him but herself. Was it not perhaps her own image — she who had left home at nineteen and gone on to make a life for herself in Seoul, always entirely under her own steam — that She had seen mirrored in this man's exhaustion. page 137-8

"After her husband left them, Ji-woo would often ask her, "Is there a dad in our family?" It was the question he'd asked her every morning even when her husband was still around, so infre-quently did the boy actually see him.

"No," she would answer shortly. And then, soundlessly: "No one at all. There's only you and me. That will have to be enough, now." Page 140

"When did all of this begin? She sometimes asked herself in such moments. "NO — when did it all begin to fall apart?" Page 141

"Even as a child, In-hye had possessed the innate strength of character necessary to make one's own way in life. As a daughter, as an older sister, as a wife and as a mother, as the owner of a shop, even as an underground passenger on the briefest of journeys, she had always done her best. Through the sheer inertia of a life lived in this way, she would have been able to conquer everything, even time. If only Yeong-hye hadn't suddenly disappeared last March. If only she hadn't been discovered in the forest that rainy night. If only all of her symptoms hadn't suddenly got worse." Page 145

" those moments when her sister's single-lidded eyes would narrow and turn completely dark, when that innocent laughter would come rushing out of her mouth. "Do you know how I found out? Well, I was in a dream, and I was standing on my head … leaves were growing from my body, and roots were sprouting from my hands … so I dug down into the earth. On and on …  I wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch, so I spread my legs, I spread them wide ..."

Bewildered, In-hye looked across at Yeong-hye's feverish eyes. "I need to water my body. I don't need this kind of food, sister.

I need water." page 154

"Yeong-hye's lips twitched almost imperceptibly, "I'm thirsty." he whispered. "Give me some water." 

Yeong-hye cut her off. "They say my insides have all átrophied, you know." In-hye was lost for words. Yeong-hye moved her emaciated face closer to her sister. "I'm not an animal anymore, sister." she said, first scanning the empty ward as if about to disclose a momentous secret. "I don't need to eat, not now. I can live without it. All I need is sunlight."

"What are you talking about? Do you really think you've turned into a tree? How could a plant talk? How can you think these things?"

Yeong-hye's eyes shone. A mysterious smile played on her face.

"You're right. Soon now, words and thoughts will all disappear. Soon." Yeong-hye burst into laughter, then sighed. "Very soon. Just a bit longer to wait, sister." page 159

“I heard something," Yeong-hye had said, lying hooked up to the drip. "I went there because I heard something calling me … I don't hear it anymore now …  I was just standing there waiting"

When In-hye asked, "What were you waiting for?," a fever came into Yeong-hye's eyes. Her right hand was the one with the needle in it, she reached out with her left and grabbed In-hye's hand. In-hye was shocked by how strong her grip was.

"It melted in the rain …  it all melted …  I'd been just about to go down into the earth. There was nothing else for it if I wanted to turn myself upside down again, you see." page 165-6

"In-hye stands quietly and observes the scene. Anything sharp or narrow that could be used to pierce or cut, anything with a long cord that could be wrapped around a throat, is forbidden Partly this is to prevent the patients from harming others, but the scans their faces, each of them bent over their hands, absorbed in main concern is that they would want to harm themselves." Page 176

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Trilogy by JON FOSSE

 rilogy by JON FOSSE

Translated by May -Brit Akerholt

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Wakefulness

Asle and Alida 

"Asle and Alida were wandering the streets of Bjørgvin." Page 3

"It's late autumn, it's dark and cold, and soon it might start to rain as well - we have to have somewhere to live, she said" page 4 and 8

Olav's Dreams 

Olav and Åsta

where are we going, Alida says

I don't know, Asle says

we'll go to where we end up, she says     We'll go where the road leads us, he says

Page 85

with the finest bracelet in his hand, in the yellowest gold with the bluest of blue pearls,

She's standing there half hidden behind the curtain.

weariness

ˈwirēnəs

Fghjb B jjggfdd

"I saw them hanging him and I saw him hanging there, he says

and Alida thinks that she and Asle are still sweethearts, they are with each other, he is with her, she with him, she

in him, he in her, Alida thinks, and she looks out across the sea, and in the sky she sees Asle, she sees that the sky is Asle, and she notices the wind, and the wind is Asle, he

is there, he is the wind, if he doesn't exist, he is still there and then she hears Asle saying that he is there, she sees him there, if she looks out across the sea she'll see that he is the sky she sees there above the sea, Asle says, and Alida looks and of course she sees Asle, but not just him, she sees herself too there in the sky and Asle says that he too exists in her and in little Sigvald and Alida says that yes he does, he always will and Alida thinks that now Asle is alive only in her and in little Sigvald, now she is Asle in life, Alida thinks, and then she hears Asle saying I am there, I am with you, I am always with you, so don't be afraid, I will follow you, Asle says, and Alida looks out to the sea and there, on the sky there, she sees his face, she sees it like an invisible sun, and then she sees his hand, it lifts up and it waves to her and Asle repeats that she must not be afraid and he says that she must take good care of herself and little Sigvald, she must look after herself and little Sigvald as best as she can, and then, before too long, then they'll meet again before too long, Aslesays, and Alida feels his body close to hers and she feels his hand stroking her hair and she strokes his hair" page 152-3

"Ales thinks, and Alida looks at Ales and she thinks that she notices that she is there, of course she does, and perhaps she is tormenting her daughter by being there, and she doesn't want that, why would she want to tor-ment her own daughter, she doesn't want to torment her own daughter at all, her, her good daughter,  her oldest daughter, " page 169-170

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Vika     Dylgja       Bjørgvin 

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So far, four Norwegian writers have won the Nobel Prize in Literature:

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson – won in 1903.

Knut Hamsun – won in 1920.

Sigrid Undset – won in 1928.

Jon Fosse – won in 2023.

Åsta, Norway

here are some interesting and distinctive facts about Jon Fosse, beyond just the Nobel Prize:

Minimalist style: Fosse is famous for writing with very simple words, lots of repetition, pauses, and silence. What is not said is often more important than what is said.

“Fossean” rhythm: His prose and drama have a musical, hypnotic rhythm, influenced by prayer, breathing, and waves. Many readers say his texts feel like listening rather than reading.

Writes in Nynorsk: He writes in Nynorsk, a minority written form of Norwegian. This was a cultural and political statement, helping raise its literary status.

Deeply spiritual (but not religious propaganda): Although he converted to Catholicism later in life, his work explores faith, doubt, death, and grace in a quiet, non-preaching way.

More famous as a playwright (at first): Before his novels became widely known, Fosse was one of the most performed living playwrights in the world, especially in Europe.

Influenced by Samuel Beckett: Like Beckett, he focuses on waiting, repetition, loneliness, and stripped-down language—but Fosse is warmer and more emotional.