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Rebecca Liu
Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

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There are only girls on the internet

Book Review

August 2022

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2022

I remember the first time I saw it, like a freshly alert hare alarmed by movement in the distant grasslands. It was 2013. Model...

Book Review

September 2020

Pankaj Mishra’s ‘Bland Fanatics’

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

September 2020

The Anglo-American commentariat is full of lofty egos. Pankaj Mishra has developed a reputation as their great deflater. ‘Watch...

Originally published as three separate novellas, the second of which secured the prestigious Yi Sang prize, The Vegetarian has by now been translated as far afield as Poland and Vietnam, Argentina and Portugal Set in contemporary South Korea, the story follows a young wife’s refusal to eat meat and the varied, often violent, reactions this provokes in those around her Han Kang’s poetic sensibility comes through in the jagged fragments of her protagonist Yeong-hye’s thoughts, which irrupt throughout the main narrative, and transgression slides towards transformation as the young woman dreams of becoming a plant The Vegetarian is published in January 2015 by Portobello Books —DS    *     The sunny south-facing apartment was on the seventeenth floor True, the view out east was obscured by other buildings, but to the rear the mountains were visible in the distance   ‘Now you’ve forgotten all your worries,’ my father-in-law pronounced, taking up his spoon and chopsticks ‘Completely seized the moment!’   Even before she got married, my sister-in-law In-hye had managed to secure an apartment with the income she received from managing a cosmetics store Leading up to her pregnancy, the store had expanded to three times its original size, and after the birth she insisted on stopping by – only at night, and just for a short while – to make sure that everything was running smoothly in her absence As soon as my nephew Ji-woo turned 3 and went to a nursery, she’d apparently started spending all day in the shop again   I envied her husband He was an art college graduate who liked to pose as an artist, yet didn’t contribute a single penny to their household finances True, he had some property that he’d inherited, but he didn’t bring in a salary – in fact, his activities were limited to sitting around and not doing an awful lot of anything Now that In-hye had rolled up her sleeves and gone back to work, her husband was free to spend his whole life messing about with ‘art’, without a single worry to trouble his comfortable existence Not only that, but In-hye was also a skilled

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

Jia Tolentino’s ‘Trick Mirror’

Book Review

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2019

Talk about the fates of young professional women today and you will often alight on two themes: the anxieties that come with living in...

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Art

July 2014

Operation Paperclip

Naomi Pearce

Patrick Goddard

Art

July 2014

‘I began at this point to feel that politics was not something “out there” but something “in here” and of...

Interview

Issue No. 20

Interview with Anne Carson

Željka Marošević

Interview

Issue No. 20

Throughout her prolific career as a poet and a translator, Anne Carson has been concerned with combatting what she calls...

feature

November 2011

The nobility of confusion: occupying the imagination

Drew Lyness

feature

November 2011

The Oakland Police Officers Association in California said something clever recently: ‘As your police officers, we are confused.’ It...

 

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