Young survivors face a chaotic landscape

The Drowned Cities By Paolo Bacigalupi(Little, Brown)Whether it’s a conscious or subliminal reaction to U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, war is an increasingly common theme in modern young adult literature. But its horrors are rarely so thoroughly detailed as in Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Drowned Cities.” One of the more graphically violent young adult titles of late, “The Drowned Cities” reads like a dystopian mash-up of the Vietnam War and modern geopolitics, where survivalism b

April 27, 2012

Quick and easy guide to home-cooked meals

Simply Delicious One Course MealsBy Kye Kim (Recipe anecdotes contributed by Michelle Kim Vaughan)(Bookhouse Publishers)Living in a city with hot eateries and restaurants, cooking at home may not be appealing to busy Seoulites. But author Kye Kim’s newly published bilingual book, “Simply Delicious One Course Meals,” introduces easy ways to cook the dishes you love when eating out ― such as jajangmyeon (noodles with black bean sauce), sushi rolls and shabu shabu.Kim, who wrote two books on food p

April 27, 2012

Author Edward Humes enjoys digging through rubbish

Edward Humes is a man of eclectic storytelling tastes. A former journalist awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for a series of stories he wrote for the Orange County Register on the military establishment in Southern California, Humes has written 11 nonfiction books on subjects including how the GI Bill transformed the American Dream, Southern justice and the Dixie Mafia, and the juvenile justice system in Los Angeles County. His latest book, “Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash” (Avery: 27

April 27, 2012

Paju Book City wins award in Abu Dhabi

Paju Book City, home to some 260 local publishing houses in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, won a prestigious book award in the United Arab Emirates last month.The Korean book town won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, one of the most prestigious book-themed awards in the Arab world, for its “contribution to technology in the field of culture.” The book city won 225 million won in prize money. The award was established in 2006 in commemoration of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who served as the presiden

April 24, 2012

Literary symposium honors late poets

Annual event celebrates work of Baek and 4 other writers born 100 years agoIt has been 100 years since Korea’s beloved poet Baek Seok (1912-1973) was born. “No poet in history holds a comparable position in Korea,” said literary critic Hwang Gwang-soo, who attended a press meeting on Tuesday in Seoul to share his plans for an upcoming event commemorating the poet’s life. “Because he chose to move back to his hometown, which is located in North Pyeongan Province of North Korea, after the Korean W

April 24, 2012

Shin’s award-winning novel sells over 2 million here

“Please Look After Mom,” a novel of family love and loss by award-winning author Shin Kyung-sook, has sold more than two million copies in her homeland South Korea, the publisher said Tuesday.Lee Sang-Sul, director at publisher Changbi, said only two other novels since the 1990s had sold more than two million in South Korea, “so it’s a rare achievement for a pure literary work.”Shin last month became the first South Korean to win the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize with the novel, which portrays a

April 24, 2012

A celebration followed by tragedy

Carry the One By Carol Anshaw(Simon & Schuster)The long shadow cast by the excesses of the 1980s has been the subject of several excellent recent novels, including Michelle Huneven’s “Blame” and Eleanor Henderson’s “Ten Thousand Saints.” How do the survivors of self-induced, self-indulgent tragedies do penance, find wisdom, compensate (or not) in the decades following?Carol Anshaw’s novel “Carry the One” begins at the rural Wisconsin wedding of Carmen Kenney and Matt Sloan in 1983. The final hou

April 20, 2012

A glimpse of the private Susan Sontag

As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 By Susan Sontag, edited by David Rieff(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)In the three years since “Reborn,” the first volume of Susan Sontag’s journals and notebooks, was published, at least three more books about the literary titan have appeared, notably Sigrid Nunez’s 2011 memoir, “Sempre Susan.”Although Nunez’s reminiscences ― centering primarily on the brief time she lived with Sontag and her son, David Rieff, in the mid-’70s

April 20, 2012

Rachel Maddow dings Congress as ineffective in her first book

Rising from their seats en masse, the liberal faithful at Beverly Hills’ Saban Theatre greeted Rachel Maddow like parishioners welcoming a mega-church pastor.Cellphone cameras flashed like fireworks. Lusty, and perhaps a few lustful, cheers cascaded from the Art Deco mezzanine.Bill Maher, the interviewer at Tuesday night’s Writers Bloc public chat, turned to Maddow as they took the sold-out theater’s stage. How much of that do you think was for you, and how much was for me? Maher joked.No offens

April 20, 2012

Im and Hong head to Cannes film fest

Director Im Sang-soo’s drama “Taste of Money,” and director Hong Sang-soo’s “In Another Country,” which stars French actress Isabelle Huppert, are in the running for a prize at the upcoming 65th Cannes Film Festival.This marks director Hong’s eighth appearance at Cannes, and his third time being invited to the festival’s competition section ― after his 2004 drama “Woman is the Future of Man” and the 2010 drama “Hahaha.” The 2010 film won the Prix Un Certain Regard at the festival that year. Dire

April 20, 2012

British Library buys Europe’s oldest book

LONDON (AFP) ― The St. Cuthbert gospel, Europe’s oldest intact book, will remain in Britain after a record-breaking fundraising campaign by the British Library, it said Tuesday.Half of the 9 million pounds ($14.2 million) required to purchase the 7th century copy of the Gospel of St. John came from the The National Heritage Memorial Fund with charitable foundations, trusts and the public making up the rest. It is the largest ever campaign mounted by the library and ensures the manuscript, which

April 17, 2012

A Finnish thriller stars a Jewish cop

Nights of AweBy Harri Nykanen, translated from the Finnish by Kristian London (Bitter Lemon)The protagonist of Harri Nykanen’s “Nights of Awe” is named Ariel Kafka, and he’s one of two Jewish police officers in Helsinki.Now, Finland’s entire Jewish population is no bigger than a couple of good-sized Long Island bar mitzvahs, so it’s no shock that Jews would be somewhat exotic figures there. Nykanen has Kafka react with head-shaking amusement to well-meaning questions about Jews, and the deadpan

April 13, 2012

Young girl creates a ‘Land of Decoration’

The Land of DecorationBy Grace McCleen (Henry Holt)According to her website, author Grace McCleen grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household in Britain. Encouraged by teachers on a path she had not set her sights on, a university education, she attended Oxford, only to lose her faith and fragile sense of self. Judging by her semiautobiographical first novel, “The Land of Decoration,” she has been saved by writing, if not restored to salvation.The book’s title comes from the Book of Ezekiel,

April 13, 2012

Scholar looks into works of Joseon’s female writers

The Poetic World of Classic Korean Women Writers, By Lee Hai-soon, Translated by Hur Won-jae (Ewha Womans University Press)They were prohibited from public education and had to work against a male-dominated world to leave their literary legacy.Scholar Lee Hai-soon’s English-language book, “The Poetic World of Classic Korean Women Writers,” features 13 female poets from Korea’s Joseon era ― the time period when Chinese was regarded as the common written language in East Asia. She dedicates a chap

April 13, 2012

Novel on Impressionists paints them extra blue

Christopher Moore’s new novel blends diligently researched art history smoothly with his fevered, fiendish imagination. So smoothly, in fact, that you must never, ever give this book to a docent who gives museum tours.But do give “Sacre Bleu” to anyone who likes tales of the Impressionists ― especially comic, down-and-dirty ones.Moore starts from real points ― the prevalence of blue in the Impressionists’ paintings, and unexplained questions about the death of Vincent Van Gogh. He then spins a s

April 13, 2012

Korea’s best-selling children’s novel wins Polish award

A translated version of the best-selling Korean children’s novel “Leafie, a Hen into the Wild” has won a literary honor in Poland, according to Korea Literature Translation Institute.The book, about the adventures of a mother hen who tries to escape the coop with her duckling son, has been named the “best book of spring 2012” (Najlepsza ksika na wiosne 2012) by Granice.pl, a renowned literary organization in Poland. According to Korea Literature Translation Institute, it is the first time a Kore

April 11, 2012