Every project has to begin somewhere… and this is where mine began. At first I felt daunted and small, and then uplifted by the swell of inspiration this book offered. I was gripped by Yeong-Hye’s story, and saw in it so many literary themes that are familiar to me, as well as finding a challenge to me not to be complacent about what “women’s writing” is I realised how little I knew about Korea, and about modern literature beyond my own areas of language proficiency. But WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHER BOOKS? Han Kang writes of patriarchy, violence, sexuality, madness, refusal to submit, and one woman’s determination to live as she wishes, not as she is told she ought to wish. I didn’t see the two things as being connected, but as I was reading The Vegetarian it hit me in the gut: French women’s writing is fascinating, and I could easily carry on dedicating my professional life to reading it and writing about it. My husband bought me this novel as a gift, around the time that I was trying to work out the project I wanted to pursue. This restricts me to anything written in English, French or Spanish, and so it was about time I widened my horizons. I have a confession to make: despite my love of languages and of translation, I have always gravitated towards reading books written in their original language. This is the novel that kindled a spark that grew into this project. Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith (Portobello, 2015)
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