Kim Ae-ran receives French literary award

Korean author Kim Ae-ran’s short story “I Go to the Convenience Store” received this year’s French literary award “Prix de Linapercu.” (Literature Translation Institute of Korea)Korean novelist Kim Ae-ran has received a French literary award, the Prix de Linapercu, for her short story “I Go to the Convenience Store,” the Literature Translation Institute of Korea said Monday. The Prix de Linapercu, meaning “Prize for the Unnoticed,” is presented for work that received less attention than it deser

June 11, 2014

Shin Kyung-sook’s second book published in English

Best-selling novelist Shin Kyung-sook’s latest work, “I’ll Be Right There,” was published in English in the United States last week. It is her second book to be translated into English, after her critically acclaimed 2009 novel “Please Look After Mom” was translated and published in English in 2011, selling over 2 million copies worldwide.“I’ll Be Right There” begins with protagonist Jung-yoon receiving a call from her ex-boyfriend of eight years that their beloved literature professor, who insp

June 9, 2014

‘The Farm’ cultivates little suspense for a thriller

Tom Rob Smith’s fourth novel, “The Farm,” opens with a vivid conflict: A Londoner named Daniel receives a phone call from his father with troubling news. “Your mum’s in hospital,” the older man says. “She’s been committed.” Then the phone rings again and it’s his mother, who offers a conflicting tale. “I’m on a payphone and I don’t have much credit,” she announces. “I’m sure your father has spoken to you. Everything that man has told you is a lie.”This, of course, is the very definition of high

June 5, 2014

How a quiet father of 6 became one of America’s most important spies

I never met CIA officer Robert Ames, though our paths overlapped in the Middle East, particularly in Beirut during some of the worst months of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war. The ruins of the U.S. Embassy building where Ames met his demise in April 1983 was just down the street from my first residence when I moved to Beirut four months later.His favorite restaurants became mine. We had talked to a lot of the same figures whose names, at the time, were synonymous with Middle East danger and intrigue

June 5, 2014

‘The Vacationers’ takes readers on an affecting, funny ride

The VacationersBy Hannah Sampson (The Miami Herald)Readers meet a kindred spirit on the opening page of Emma Straub’s winsome new novel when Jim Post worries about the contents of his suitcase: “Had he packed enough books?”Yes, this is the sort of person you ― or at least I ― wouldn’t mind passing a fictional vacation with. The fact that he is disgraced when the novel opens, forced to retire from his job as a men’s magazine editor after an affair with a 23-year-old editorial assistant, dampens t

June 5, 2014

Nobody is innocent in compelling story of murder, race in the South

Natchez BurningBy Cindy Bagwell (The Dallas Morning News)It doesn’t pay to be one of the good guys in Greg Iles’ world.Villainous or heroic, you’re equally likely to meet a painful ― and painfully described ― end.“Natchez Burning,” the first of a trilogy and the fourth outing for Iles’ protagonist Penn Cage, begins with a warning against deifying mere mortals. Even gods have feet of clay, and in Iles’ South, they’re likely to have blood on their hands, too.Cage’s father, Tom, is suspected of kil

June 5, 2014

Publishers, public meet at BookExpo America

NEW YORK (AP) ― Publishers and the public met last weekend at BookExpo America, the annual industry convention, and seemed to speak in different languages. If you were part of the book business, “Amazon” was a dirty word and “Hachette” an applause line as editors, booksellers, writers and agents pondered, fretted and largely refused to discuss the well-publicized and sharply-worded standoff in negotiations between the online retailer and Hachette Book Group. With terms for e-books sales reported

June 2, 2014

‘Age of Ambition’ observes China’s split personality

For more than a year, a portion of my apartment complex in Beijing has been a construction zone; squat, old buildings have been razed, and new towers are sprouting in their stead. The area is blocked off by walls covered with large, professionally printed green banners that stretch perhaps 15 feet high. A slogan on one reads: “The China Dream, My Dream.”Such posters ― inspired by President Xi Jinping himself ― can be found all over the country, and in six brief Chinese characters, the motto unwi

May 15, 2014

Larry McMurtry talks about his new novel

Not quite five years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry greeted the arrival of his novel “Rhino Ranch” by saying it would be his last, his fiction-writing finale. But on May 7, McMurtry released his 46th book. It, too, is a novel, titled “The Last Kind Words Saloon.”So what changed?“Oh, I don’t know,” the 77-year-old icon said by phone from his bookstore in his native Archer City, Texas. “You never know about these things.”“The title is ripped off from a very legendary blues calle

May 15, 2014

An atheist ‘Living With a Wild God’

Living With A Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth About Everything By Barbara Ehrenreich (Twelve Books)“I was born to atheism and raised in it, by people who had derived their own atheism from a proud tradition of working-class rejection of authority in all its forms, whether vested in bosses or priests, gods or demons.” That sounds like the Barbara Ehrenreich we know ― the political activist and author of “Nickel and Dimed,” the feisty champion of the working poor, the professional c

May 15, 2014

Legal thriller set in Zambia

The Garden of Burning SandBy Corban Addison(Quercus)From the opening scene of a young girl in peril to the rich conclusion of whether justice is served, “The Garden of Burning Sand” gives readers a glimpse inside the government and criminal system of Zambia ― and it may make us appreciate the American system a bit more.After authorities in the city of Lusaka are told that a girl with Down syndrome has been sexually assaulted and seems unable to speak, in comes Zoe Fleming, an American lawyer wor

May 15, 2014

[Eye on English]The art of translating Korean texts into English

Freelance translator Yi Jin spent some 18 years translating English literature into Korean, but she is now learning to do it the other way around.“Most English novels that are translated into Korean get that opportunity because they are good,” Yi told The Korea Herald. “So it’s been very rewarding and fun to introduce them to the Korean reading public. But after many years of doing that, I thought, ‘How come Korean novels don’t get to be translated into English?’ Whenever I read good Korean nove

May 14, 2014

How Mormonism affected 2 U.S. towns

American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon ChurchBy Alex Beam (PublicAffairs)It didn’t last long, but for a short time in the 1840s the Mississippi River town of Nauvoo was the largest city in Illinois. While most municipalities thrived on trade, Nauvoo’s propelling force was something much less tangible: faith. And that would also be the city’s downfall.Before the fledgling Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ― the Mormons ― made Salt Lake City the cente

May 8, 2014

A campaign biography with a twist

Elizabeth Warren’s ninth book is a campaign biography with a twist.Warren, who emerged as a national figure during the early days of the financial crisis, rapidly became a star of the Democratic Party’s liberal-populist wing. Her 2012 Senate campaign in Massachusetts attracted so much money and attention that admirers began talking her up as a presidential candidate even before she won.“A Fighting Chance” could easily fit as the next step toward that goal. It weaves her life story and political

May 8, 2014

You say you want a revolution?

Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin’s Plot for Global RevolutionBy Giles Milton (Bloomsbury Press, N.Y.)If you want some wonderful spy stories, and a lesson in 20th century revolution, try “Russian Roulette” by Giles Milton.Just under a century ago, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ― better known today as Lenin ― returned to Russia and swept away the old Czarist regime. His first speech to his followers was at a train station on April 16, 1917, and was monitored by three British spies.Only

May 8, 2014

Shirley Temple and the Great Depression

If ever a performer came along at just the right time, it was Shirley Temple. The cherubic face and unbreakable spirit she displayed in her cinematic confections of the 1930s were the perfect spoonfuls of sugar to help the bitter medicine of the Depression go down easier for millions of Americans.The timing also couldn’t be better for John F. Kasson’s “The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression,” which arrives just two months after Temple’s death at age 85. The book is a wonderful epilogue

May 8, 2014

Romance novel touts bliss of financial independence

Personal-finance tomes aren’t usually bodice rippers with breathless sentences like: “She wanted him and couldn’t wait to have him, was totally addicted to his touch and couldn’t resist him.”But Boca Raton, Florida, financial planner Kathleen Grace, 46, wanted to explore women’s emotions about money and love ― and how those feelings can interfere with managing money.So Grace, who co-founded Excelsior Capital Advisors, hired a romance writer to help her create a modern fairy tale of Cinderella ―

May 1, 2014

‘Hyde’ a nightmare in the making

HydeBy Daniel Levine (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)Readers get a bonus when they purchase Daniel Levine’s “Hyde,” a new take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”: The original thriller is included as a coda in the Levine book.I strongly recommend reading the classic first, then heading into Levine’s novel, which tells the story from the monster’s point of view. As Grendel is to Beowulf or Wicked is to The Wizard of Oz, so Hyde is to Jekyll and Hyde.Levine makes

May 1, 2014

‘Family Life’ a heartbreaking novel

Family LifeBy Akhil Sharma (W.W. Norton & Co)Akhil Sharma’s new novel, “Family Life,” should come with a warning sticker: Heartbreak ahead. This slender book, hardly more than 200 pages, follows 8-year-old Ajay Mishra and his family from India to Queens, where Ajay’s older brother, Birju, fulfills his parents’ immigrant hopes by gaining acceptance to the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. Then, their world is shattered when a swimming pool accident leaves Birju severely brain-damaged ― pu

May 1, 2014

Duke lacrosse scandal revisited in ‘Price of Silence’

Financial reporter William D. Cohan likes alpha males in troubled waters, and he wades into especially brackish murk for his new investigative book, “The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite and the Corruption of Our Great Universities.”The scandal grew out of a spring break party on March 13, 2006, for which the Blue Devils’ varsity men’s lacrosse team hired two strippers. One woman accused three players of raping her in the bathroom of the off-campus house shared

May 1, 2014