Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2016, "The Vegetarian" tells the story of Yeong-hye and her husband, who are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and gentle manners, while she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable lull of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a plant-like existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque, recurring nightmares. In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unknown and social norms are strictly followed, Yeong-hye's decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive resistance manifests in increasingly bizarre and disturbing forms, driving her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties lead her to a suicide attempt and into psychiatry. Unwittingly, she captivates her sister's husband, a video artist who falls in love with her. She becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic and uncontrollable artworks, as she continues to slip into her fantasies, trying to escape her fleshly prison and – impossibly, ecstatically – become a tree. Tense, disturbing, and beautiful, "The Vegetarian" is a novel about modern South Korea, but also a novel about shame, desire, and our faltering attempts to understand one another, from one trapped body to another.