Novelist Han Kang, 46, has become the first Korean writer to be on the long list for the Man Booker International Prize.　　The prestigious award body announced Thursday on its website 13 contenders for the 2016 prize, including Han’s 2004 novel “The Vegetarian,” translated by Deborah Smith.　　“The Vegetarian” was published in the U.K. in January 2015 and in the U.S. last month to both critical and popular acclaim.  　Novelist Han Kang (Literature Translation Institute of Korea)　Nobel laureate Orhan

March 10, 2016

“Evicted”　By Matthew Desmond　Crown (432 pages, $28)　For nearly a decade, Matthew Desmond has studied the relationship between eviction and poverty in a single American city: Milwaukee. The MacArthur Foundation awarded him a “genius” grant last year for his research, including the Milwaukee Area Renters Study he designed and supervised, which yielded this sobering conclusion: “Among Milwaukee renters, over 1 in 5 black women report having been evicted in their adult life, compared to 1 in 12 Hisp

March 10, 2016

“At the Existentialist Cafe”　By Sarah Bakewell　Other Press (439 pages, $25)　Here’s a startling thought. Consider what you are doing right now without realizing you’re doing it. For example, you are reading the English language written in the Roman alphabet, even though thousands of languages and writing systems have existed, and you would just as easily use one of them instead if you had been born in a different time or place. You are probably flipping pages of a newspaper or clicking through a

March 10, 2016

“Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship”　By Anjan Sundaram　Doubleday Books (208 pages, $25.95)In the early 1990s, the world watched in horror as Hutus and Tutsis slaughtered each other in Rwanda. When it ended, Paul Kagame was heralded as one of the leaders of forces that ended the bloodshed.　As president since 2000, President Kagame has fooled much of the world into thinking his country is a happy democracy and has received tons of international funding because on the surface Rwanda shine

March 10, 2016

Korea will be spotlighted as the guest of honor at the Paris Book Fair, to be held March 16-20 at the Paris Expo Porte de Versaille exhibition center, where a selection of Korean works will be displayed and some of the country’s most influential writers will be holding talks, the Korean Publishers Association said in a statement Wednesday. 　Some 60 works by 30 Korean authors will be featured, including the esteemed Hwang Sok-yong, who wrote the novel “Evening Star,” and Han Kang, whose novel “Th

March 10, 2016

NEW YORK (AP) -- Homework? Ban it! Circle time? It’s not for every kindergartner. Forced sharing? How about letting a kid play with a toy until she’s done?　Those are just a few of the ideas that Heather Shumaker advocates as “renegade” in a new book, “It’s OK to Go Up the Slide,” an extension of her first parenting guide, “It’s OK Not to Share.”　Shumaker is the mom of two boys, ages 11 and 8, in Traverse City, Michigan. As a youngster, she was a student where her mother taught for 40 years in Co

March 10, 2016

“What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours: Stories”　 By Helen Oyeyemi　Riverheard Books (336 pages, $27)　Midway through the third and strongest of the nine stories in Helen Oyeyemi’s breathtakingly bold and original “What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours” -- unlike any short story collection I've read -- one meets a girl reading a book on a plane.　Because the plane is going “through a terrifyingly long tunnel of turbulence,” everyone else is “freaking out.”　Asked if she’d noticed “we might be about to crash,” the

March 10, 2016

“Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century” 　By Daniel Oppenheimer　Simon & Schuster (416 pages, $28)　When Ronald Reagan joined the Hollywood Democratic Committee, it was riven with communists. Four decades later, of course, the Republican president stood in West Berlin and demanded of the communist bloc, “Tear down this wall!”　His is the least intimately told of the six stories of political transformation in Daniel Oppenheimer’s sweeping, beautifully written but

March 3, 2016

“Opening Belle” 　By Maureen Sherry　Simon & Schuster (352 pages, $25)　If you’ve seen the film “The Big Short” and noticed that it was all about the men who profited from the financial crisis of 2007-10, you may have wondered where all the Wall Street women were. Sure, there was that Goldman Sachs saleswoman and a couple of others, but most female roles fell into the category of exotic dancer or somebody's wife.　You’ll find the women of Wall Street here, in the diverting “Opening Belle,” which is

March 3, 2016

 　"Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart"　 By Claire Harman　Alfred A. Knopf (480 pages, $30)　Two hundred years after her birth, Charlotte Bronte's rage over social expectations for women and thwarted ambitions are as relevant as ever, and a new biography by Claire Harman makes the "Jane Eyre" author fresh and relatable to readers who might only think of the Brontes as figures long buried in tragic myth.　Bronte and her sisters Emily and Anne published their poems and novels -- including "Wuthering Heig

March 3, 2016

NEW YORK (AP) -- Nobel laureate Toni Morrison has received an honorary prize named for another Nobel winner, the late Saul Bellow.　PEN America, the literary and human rights organization, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that Morrison has been given the $25,000 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American fiction. Morrison, 85, is known for such novels as "Beloved," "Song of Solomon" and "Jazz."　"Revelatory, intelligent, bold, her fiction is invested in the black experience, in black li

March 2, 2016

“A Doubter’s Almanac” 　 By Ethan Canin　 Random House (576 pages, $28)　Ethan Canin’s new multigenerational family saga is about the agony of the select few wired to master what seems indecipherable to mere mortals. Here math represents, among other things, a state of existential torment worthy of Sisyphus, who watched helplessly as his boulder kept falling back down the hill.　“There’s no proof in mathematics that can’t be broken down into steps basic enough for a child of reasoning age to follow.

Feb. 25, 2016