The Vegetarian

by Han Kang (2007). A woman stops eating meat and starts experiencing strange dreams, and her family attempts to make sense of this. While her husband shows contempt, her brother-in-law descends into sexual obsession. The images of the novel are violently arresting, from the woman’s blood-soaked visions to two naked bodies entwined and painted with flowers.

by Susanna Moore (1995). Frannie is an English teacher with a mysterious past and a fascination with slang. One evening she sees a woman in the basement of a bar performing a sex act on a man with a distinctive tattoo; when the woman is murdered, Frannie finds herself drawn into a dangerous world. Moore’s novel subverts thriller conventions and, in centering Frannie’s complex sexual agency, is authentically erotic.

In the Cut

by Fleur Jaeggy (1989). At a Swiss boarding school, a teenage girl obsesses over the enigmatic Frédérique, a fellow pupil. The pressure cooker of boarding school is a perfect environment for an infatuation, an infatuation belied by the ice-cold prose that conveys the narrator’s fluctuating designs and feelings.

Sweet Days of Discipline