The Vegetarian Archive

Cultural Legibility in America’s Dark Chapter

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What does it mean to be culturally legible? And what does cultural legibility mean with regard to writing about or from within one’s own culture?

Loving the Stranger Beside You: Han Kang’s The Vegetarian

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In The Vegetarian, a collection of three linked novellas, author Han Kang creates and then protects an open moral space between Yeong-hye’s sudden conversion to vegetarianism and her family’s perception of it.

Past the City Limit Sign: The Role of Rural in 2016 Books

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What kinds of stories will emerge that focus on rural or city settings during a Trump presidency? Will the typical themes continue to be cemented or will variations become the norm?

Lessons from a Year in Translation

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That number is low, but looks good next to the fact that only about 3% of all the books published in the US are translations, a number that grows even smaller if you focus on literary fiction (roughly 0.7%).

“Sufficient Ambiguity”: An Interview with Deborah Smith

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Deborah Smith is a translator of Korean and the founder of a new non-profit London-based publisher, Tilted Axis Press. Recently, she has worked with Korean author Han Kang to bring her novel The Vegetarian to an English-reading audience. The book is a collection of three linked novellas about a