When she won the Nobel Prize last year I was extremely disappointed. I thought The Vegetarian was a pretty mediocre Pot Boiler with some interesting ideas that never really go anywhere. I was pretty disappointed. I thought if the committee really wanted to give the prize to an asian writer there were many others who deserved the price much more(Yoko Ogawa,Vinod Kumar Shukla, Arundhati Roy the list goes on)
This year my friend bought "The White Book" from a book fair we both visited and I was leafing through it and it caught my interest so I borrowed it from him. I don't want to whine about it too much but it made me cry like a child because of my own personal experiences and the beautiful writing(I also didn't return it to my friend). I immediately read Human Acts and even though I think it's worser than The White Book I still think it's a pretty good book about a very ignored part of history. I am currently reading Greek Lessons and also loving it so far and I think it has the potential to be as good as The White Book. She has a very distinct way of writing about personal trauma intertwined with history and how both affect and shape each other through Language, memory and violence. I feel that The Vegetarian being her most popular book is very detrimental to her larger body of work. It was her first novel(or one of her early novels) and she was still trying to develop her ideas and literary voice. It clearly shows that she was not as mature as she is, in her later works. I am interested to learn more about other people's opinions on her work. How do you all feel about her works outside of The Vegetarian?(Also how is her new book in english?)
(Even if you hated The Vegetarian please give The White Book a shot.)
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