The Korea Herald

Dylan to meet Nobel academy to receive literature diploma

Mar 30, 2017

Nobel literature prize laureate Bob Dylan will meet with members of the Swedish Academy during a weekend visit to Stockholm and they will hand over his Nobel diploma and medal, the academy said Wednesday. Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the academy, said in a blog on the academy's website that Dylan will not give his Nobel lecture during the weekend but that a recorded version would be sent ...
LTI Korea digitalizes classical, contemporary Korean literature

Mar 13, 2017

Classical and contemporary Korean literature will be available electronically through the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, which has digitalized 33 masterpieces. The project involved digitalizing 28 classical pieces, which had been previously translated into English, French and German from Korean, as well as five works which were translated through the institute but had not been publis...
Barack, Michelle Obama sign bumper book deal

Mar 1, 2017

Barack and Michelle Obama have signed a deal to publish their memoirs with New York-based Penguin Random House, in a coveted contract reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars. America‘s first African-American president is already the author of two memoirs and a children’s book. He has frequently declared himself to have a “writer‘s sensibility” and has said he does not want to write a conve...
Barack, Michelle Obama sign bumper book deal: publisher

Mar 1, 2017

New York based publisher Penguin Random House has won the industry's most coveted contract: a two-for-one deal to produce the memoirs of former president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. "The company has acquired world publication rights for two books, to be written by President and Mrs Obama respectively," the publisher said in a statement. Bidding for the high-profile double book d...
Playwright who inspired ‘Moonlight’ wins PEN award

Feb 23, 2017

The playwright who inspired the Oscar-nominated movie “Moonlight” has won a prize from PEN America, the literary and human rights organization. Tarell Alvin McCraney received an award for best midcareer playwright, PEN announced Wednesday. McCraney’s “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” is the basis for the acclaimed movie drama, which is up for eight nominations at Sunday night’s Academy Awards....
Books on conservatism and rural whites up for Lukas Prize

Feb 22, 2017

Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money” and Zachary Roth’s “The Great Suppression” are among several works about the modern conservative movement and rural whites that are on the short list for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. Other nominees announced Tuesday are Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Strangers in Their Own Land,” Nancy Isenberg’s “White Trash” and Gary Younge’s “Another Day in the Death of America.” Th...
Diaz, Nguyen contributing to book about age of Trump

Feb 14, 2017

Pulitzer Prize winners Junot Diaz, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Jane Smiley are among 32 writers contributing to a book of letters responding to the election of President Donald Trump. Vintage Books told The Associated Press on Monday that “Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times” will be published on May 2 as a paperback original. The book will be divided into three sections. “Ro...
Margaret Atwood says Trump win boosted sales of her dystopian classic

Feb 13, 2017

Canada‘s best-known writer Margaret Atwood said it was largely worries about women’s issues after the US election that made her book “The Handmaid’s Tale” the latest dystopian novel to shoot back up best-seller lists. The book, about a theocratic dictatorship in the United States where women are forced to bear children for the ruling class, topped Amazon’s best-seller list earlier last week. In...
Stephen King and son Owen King to team up at book convention

Feb 8, 2017

NEW YORK (AP) -- This year’s BookExpo will feature a popular father-and-son combination: Stephen and Owen King. Convention organizers ReedPop told the Associated Press on Tuesday that the authors will be featured at a June 1 breakfast at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. They will be promoting “Sleeping Beauties,” a novel they worked on together. Other scheduled speakers at the event, hosted...
UK newspaper to spotlight Korean poems in regular feature

Feb 7, 2017

Korean poems will become a regular feature in the Guardian newspaper this year. The poems -- selected in partnership with Asymptote, a website specializing in translations of literature -- will be featured on the “Translation Tuesdays” corner of the British daily. The works of seven Korean poets, including Kim Ki-taek, Moon Tae-jun, Yoo An-jin and Choi Seung-ja, will be introduced this year, ac...
New book details old New Orleans’ hooker directories

Feb 5, 2017

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- “Josie came to this city ... to have a good time and she is going to have it while she lasts,” one madam advertised in a 1903 directory of Storyville, then New Orleans’ flourishing legal red-light district. It’s the ads that add interest to the pocket-sized directories sold a century ago for 25 cents, Pamela D. Arceneaux writes in “Guidebooks to Sin: The Blue Books of Storyvi...
Coelho, local authors slam books seizure in east Libya

Jan 25, 2017

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho joined more than 100 Libyan writers and intellectuals Monday in condemning security forces for seizing books deemed “erotic” or anti-Islamic. Coelho’s books were among those seized by authorities in the eastern Libyan town of Marj over the weekend. Security forces there published a video on Facebook over the weekend showing dozens of books importe...
Tips on using newspapers to learn English

Jan 23, 2017

“English Learning Tips Based on English Newspapers ENIE” by Yang Sung-jin; Surprise Publishing (272 pages, 15,000 won) English newspapers in South Korea have a long history. The Korea Herald, for instance, was founded in 1953. With English increasingly playing the role of an international language and mobile phones offering constant access to a vast amount of information, the number of those who...
Book spurs rising above theological comfort zone

Jan 20, 2017

Evangelical Christians and reform-minded Protestants have reason to celebrate the recent publication of “Thinking the Think,” a book that critically engages their cherished beliefs and encourages them to live closer to the Bible. Written by Senior Pastor Lee Jae-hoon of Onnuri Church in Seoul, the 193-page book marks the fifth centennial of Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation in 1517, and int...
Korean novelist evokes horrors of Gwangju massacre

Jan 20, 2017

“Human Acts: A Novel” by Han Kang; Hogarth (224 pages, $22) In May of 1980, the South Korean government turned its guns on its own people, murdering hundreds in the city of Gwangju who had been protesting a military coup and the continuation of martial law. In “Human Acts,” Korean writer Han Kang -- winner of the Man Booker International Prize -- gives us their story, presented in this short no...