Nothing disappointing about ‘The Loney’

“The Loney” By Andrew Michael HurleyHoughton Mifflin Harcourt (294 pages, $25)A menacing presence inhabits the Loney, the locals’ name for Britain’s north Lancashire coastline.A small group of Catholic faithful have traveled to the rain-battered seacoast from London on an Easter pilgrimage to visit a fabled shrine in hopes of a miracle cure for one of the travelers. The young man is simple-minded and cannot speak, but he has a pure heart and a deep love for his younger brother, our narrator.As E

July 6, 2016

Saint-Exupery’s Spanish civil war press pass found

MADRID (AFP) -- An amateur historian has found the press pass issued to French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery when he covered Spain‘s 1936-39 civil war for several French newspapers, officials said Tuesday.The pass was lost because it was not stored with others given other reporters such as German photojournalist Gerda Taro, the partner of war photographer Robert Capa, Maria Jose Turrion, the assistant head of Spain’s Salamanca-based civil war archives told AFP.Dated April 16, 1937 th

July 6, 2016

Book probes Ohio’s role as national presidential bellwether

CINCINNATI (AP) -- Just in time for the Cleveland-hosted Republican National Convention this month and as the general election campaign heats up, a new book, “The Bellwether,” examines Ohio’s importance in picking the nation’s president.Every four years, Ohio becomes, to paraphrase its former tourism slogan, the heart of it all, with the candidates, their surrogates and news crews overrunning the state while a seemingly endless loop of campaign ads dominates its airwaves.The stakes couldn’t be h

July 6, 2016

[Herald Interview] CICI chief Choi takes modern look at Korean culture

Choi Jung-wha, a professor at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, has released the English version of her new book, “K-Style: Living the Korean Way of Life,” which delves deep into the evolution of modern Korean living. 　Through her book, the founder and president of the Corea Image Communications Institute intended to arouse interest and curiosity about all things Korea and the Korean way of life.　Choi said her desire to raise international interest in Korean society was first ignited dec

June 27, 2016

[Herald Interview] Poetry in a world with no answers

When Brother Anthony was teaching English literature at Sogang University in the 1980s, he would frequent bookstores on weekends -- bookstores that were filled with students of all ages sitting on the floor, reading poetry.　“They expected to find sincerity in poetry,” he told The Korea Herald last Friday in an interview at his office in Seoul, filled to the brim with books and teapots -- Brother Anthony is a renowned Korean tea enthusiast.　“If you’re searching for some kind of in-depth meaning i

June 22, 2016

'Frozen' coming to new books, Lego animated shorts

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Disney is letting “Frozen” go in new directions.　The company says Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Kristoff and Sven from the blockbuster 2013 animated film will appear in both new books from Random House and an animated short film series from the Lego Group.　 The eight-book series “Frozen Northern Lights” will revolve around the characters attempting to restore the aurora borealis with a new troll protagonist named Little Rock. 　  This image released by Disney Publishing shows the cover of

June 22, 2016

Anne Tyler tames Shakespeare's 'Shrew'

Last fall Hogarth Press published the first in a series of novels by contemporary writers reimagining Shakespeare's plays on the 400th anniversary of his death. So far we’ve had Jeanette Winterson’s “The Gap of Time: The Winter’s Tale Retold” and Howard Jacobson’s “Shylock is My Name,” an interpretation of “The Merchant of Venice.” 　Now Anne Tyler has written a charming and witty adaptation of “The Taming of the Shrew,” moving it to Baltimore, where many of her novels are set, and dialing down S

June 22, 2016

Fiction should be marketed as 'good,' not 'Korean'

Writers such as Han Kang and Haruki Murakami are “rapturously received” by the international audience not because they document a certain culture or ethnicity, but because of the artistic value of their work, according to award-winning translator Deborah Smith.　“When a writer succeeds on the international stage, they become, for an audience, an international writer,” Smith said at a forum on Korean literature’s global expansion held Sunday as part of the Seoul International Book Fair. Smith join

June 20, 2016

‘The Vegetarian’ translator speaks out

Award-winning translator Deborah Smith said Wednesday that staying faithful to the spirit of a text was her priority. And the spirit that she tried to preserve in Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” was one of “tenderness and terror at the same time, never too far one way, always this very perfect balance,” said Smith at a press conference held at the Seoul International Book Fair on Wednesday.“The style was so controlled, restrained, without being cold and indifferent, and so those two things were the

June 15, 2016

Gregory Rabassa, translator of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, dies

NEW YORK (AP) -- Gregory Rabassa, a translator of worldwide influence and esteem who helped introduce Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar and other Latin American authors to millions of English-language readers, has died.A longtime professor at Queens College, Rabassa died Monday at a hospice in Branford, Connecticut. He was 94 and died after a brief illness, according to his daughter, Kate Rabassa Wallen.Rabassa was an essential gateway to the 1960s Latin American “boom,” when such authors a

June 15, 2016

‘The Never Ending Wars’: A scathing account of U.S. military failure and ineptitude

Andrew Bacevich studied at West Point and Princeton University and served in the U.S. Army for 22 years. He is well qualified to bring the reader a broad, informed perspective on the subject he addresses -- the U.S. military’s role in multiple presidents' largely unsuccessful efforts to bring a widely varied, very different region under American hegemony. “America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History” accomplishes this feat.The American military, apart from a series of self-hagi

June 15, 2016

‘House of Secrets’ parodies thriller cliches

The truth is out there, and it may set you free, but can you really handle the truth? And, maybe, just maybe, every turn of events is really a conspiracy in disguise with a bit of truthiness. These and other pop culture axioms that have made their way into the lexicon of common speech are part of the foundation of the 11th novel by international best-seller Brad Meltzer.With “The House of Secrets,” Meltzer launches a new thriller series that will delve heavily into historical conspiracy theories

June 15, 2016

[Eye Interview] Canadian scholar says there’s no such thing as ‘perfect’ translation

For Theresa Hyun -- a Canadian professor of Korean studies and a Korean-language poet -- straddling cultures and translating languages have come to be essential parts of her life.　For her poems, Hyun undertakes a creative process that is doubly atypical: Not only does she both write and translate her own work, she writes her poems in Korean -- the language that she learned latest in life and that is most unfamiliar to her -- and then translates them into English, her mother tongue. 　Despite, or

June 10, 2016

Irish writer wins prestigious women’s fiction prize

LONDON (AFP) - Irish writer Lisa McInerney was awarded the prestigious Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction in London on Wednesday for her debut novel “The Glorious Heresies.”Margaret Mountford, the chair of the judges, said it was a “superbly original, compassionate novel that delivers insights into the very darkest of lives through humor and skillful storytelling.” The 30,000 pound ($43,500) award, previously known as the Orange prize, is presented each year to the best novel written by a woman

June 9, 2016