Yeong Hype and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners, she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flat line of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hype, seeking a more 'plant-like' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares.

In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong Hype' s decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide and hospitalization.

She unknowingly captivates her sister's husband, a video artist. She becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, while spiraling further and further into her fantasies of abandoning her fleshly prison and becoming - impossibly, ecstatically - A tree. Fraught, disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea, but also a novel about shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.