diff --git a/src/read.rs b/src/read.rs
index 031c1d87..8fb33f09 100644
--- a/src/read.rs
+++ b/src/read.rs
@@ -1083,7 +1083,7 @@ impl<R: Read + Seek> ZipArchive<R> {
             }
             let symlink_target = if file.is_symlink() && (cfg!(unix) || cfg!(windows)) {
                 let mut target = Vec::with_capacity(file.size() as usize);
-                file.read_exact(&mut target)?;
+                file.read_to_end(&mut target)?;
                 Some(target)
             } else {
                 None
@@ -1097,8 +1097,7 @@ impl<R: Read + Seek> ZipArchive<R> {
                 {
                     use std::os::unix::ffi::OsStringExt;
                     let target = OsString::from_vec(target);
-                    let target_path = directory.as_ref().join(target);
-                    std::os::unix::fs::symlink(target_path, outpath.as_path())?;
+                    std::os::unix::fs::symlink(&target, outpath.as_path())?;
                 }
                 #[cfg(windows)]
                 {
diff --git a/tests/data/pandoc_soft_links.zip b/tests/data/pandoc_soft_links.zip
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..4eb9e219
Binary files /dev/null and b/tests/data/pandoc_soft_links.zip differ
diff --git a/tests/extract_symlink.rs b/tests/extract_symlink.rs
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..7135df50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/extract_symlink.rs
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+#[test]
+#[cfg(all(unix, feature = "_deflate-any"))]
+fn extract_should_respect_links() {
+    use std::{fs, io, path::PathBuf, str::FromStr};
+    use tempdir::TempDir;
+    use zip::ZipArchive;
+
+    let mut v = Vec::new();
+    v.extend_from_slice(include_bytes!("data/pandoc_soft_links.zip"));
+    let mut archive = ZipArchive::new(io::Cursor::new(v)).expect("couldn't open test zip file");
+    let temp_dir = TempDir::new("pandoc_soft_links").unwrap();
+    archive.extract(&temp_dir).unwrap();
+
+    let symlink_path = temp_dir.path().join("pandoc-3.2-arm64/bin/pandoc-lua");
+
+    // Read the target of the symbolic link
+    let target_path = fs::read_link(&symlink_path).unwrap();
+
+    assert_eq!(target_path, PathBuf::from_str("pandoc").unwrap());
+}