Man Booker Prize

Warning: this episode contains references to suicide. The Vegetarian, an International Booker Prize winner and the first of Han Kang's books to be translated into English, explores shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand each other. In 2016, the International Booker Prize moved from a bi-annual award recognising an author's body of work to a prize that celebrated an individual book translated into English, giving its author and translator equal billing – The Vegetarian was the first novel to win the revamped prize, and this month we're revisiting the story to explore it more deeply. In this episode Jo and James chat about: Jo and James' best and worst ever meals, spurred on by the omnipresence of food throughout The Vegetarian A slightly spoiler-y account of what happens in the novel and whether it's about Korean society and the pressures faced by women living under the patriarchy... even though the author has stressed that this isn’t the case Whether Yeong-hye, the book's protagonist, is “m