Irmi Horn, Han Kang, Eva Jiménez
Irmi Horn presents the novel by Nobel Prize winner Han Kang THE VEGETARIAN. Eva Jiménez (bandoneon, piano) provides the musical intensification.
The 45-year-old Han Kang has been successful as a writer in South Korea for years, her works revolve around themes such as violence and grief. Only recently was her book “Human Acts” translated into English, in which she processes the Gwangju massacre. “The Vegetarian” is also about violence and the traces it leaves on a woman’s body: How much violence does a woman who wants to lead a non-violent life suffer? And how much violence does she inflict on herself on the way there?
The novel, which tells of a surreal longing on its surface, probes the abysses of a patriarchal society. The story of the anti-heroine Yeong-Hye is the story of a denial. The three parts of the novel describe three perspectives on the progressive metamorphosis of the protagonist: First, her indifferent husband, then her brother-in-law, who desperately desires her, and finally her sister, whose everyday life as a successful businesswoman and faithful mother forms the counterpart to Yeong-Hye’s decomposing life.
If a hero is someone who takes his own destiny into his own hands, then a plant is the ideal anti-hero. Passive, silent, tolerable. Compared to humans, such a plant life essentially consists of renunciation of violence and refusal of consumption. You don’t need much more than water and sun. This is exactly what the protagonist longs for in Han Kang’s novel “The Vegetarian”. Her self-destructive anti-heroism is based on the desire to transform into a plant.
Https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/roman-von-han-kang-selbstverzehr-1.3139082
INFORMATION
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