The Korea Herald

Chinese writers call for more translations

Aug 28, 2011

BEIJING (AP) ― More Chinese books need to be translated and more thought-provoking ideas need to be used in novels to elevate China’s literary standing in the world, some of the country’s top writers said Friday. Speaking to promote China’s top literary award ― the Mao Dun Literature Prize ― the authors said modern Chinese literature still does not attract many Western readers despite the countr...
Lippman’s new stand-alone

Aug 26, 2011

The Most Dangerous Thing By Laura Lippman (William Morrow) In 1979, two girls and three boys on the brink of adolescence spent an idyllic summer exploring heavily wooded Leakin Park on the outskirts of Baltimore. But one day, something happened there that none of them wanted to talk about. The friends drifted apart. Decades passed. But now one of those old friends, Gordon “Go-Go” Halloran, g...
Love in the turbulent 80s

Aug 26, 2011

The Ancient Garden: A Love Story By Hwang Sok-yong (Picador Asia) While undergoing intense industrialization and economic development, Korea had a turbulent political landscape in the 1980s. Many civilians in Gwangju, in particular, stood up against former president Chun Doo-hwan’s military coup d’etat and his reign. The Gwangju uprising, which started with student demonstrations against Chun’...
They were just roomies, then a bond was forged

Aug 26, 2011

Friendships are often forged in uncomfortable environs, when individuals who wouldn’t ordinarily meet are forced to interact. Such is the case in “Dreams of Significant Girls,” a young-adult novel that unfolds in a Swiss boarding school and makes roommates of three girls from radically different backgrounds. Without the advantage of money, it’s unlikely that Shirin (the daughter of an Iranian pr...
‘The Help’ makes the leap from bookshelf to big screen

Aug 26, 2011

Movies cost a lot of money to make. Some estimates say that the average budget for a mainstream Hollywood release, including the costs of promotion and advertising, is more than $100 million. So studios don’t usually take a chance on unproved ideas (unless they’re self-explanatory concepts like “Snakes on a Plane”). Most big-budget movies are adapted from other media, and books are a reliable re...
Brains and beauty on show at naked readings

Aug 22, 2011

NEW YORK (AFP) ― Sit back and enjoy readings of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde or Henrik Ibsen, sip a glass of wine ― oh, and gaze upon the readers themselves: they’re naked. That combination of delights is on offer once a month in New York thanks to the enterprising group Naked Girls Reading. At a recent session, about 30 people, mostly younger couples and men, met in a small room with a boudoir atm...
Biography of playwright

Aug 19, 2011

Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein By Julie Salamon (The Penguin Press) Wherever Wendy Wasserstein went, women came up to her and wanted to talk about her struggles to find a meaningful balance of work, love and family ― all the while being thin. In plays like the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning “The Heidi Chronicles” and her autobiographical essays, Wasserstein unerr...
Insight into Korea’s colonial era

Aug 19, 2011

Peace under Heaven By Chae Man-sik Translated by Chun Kyung-ja (M E Sharpe, Inc.) Korea’s Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) brought many changes to Korea, and one of them was the start of capitalism here. Late author Chae Man-sik’s darkly satirical novel, “Peace under Heaven” presents a portrait of an elderly man who makes wealth by exploiting his servants and workers, while hoping the Jap...
CNN anchor: Talented, imperious, scarred, publicly out

Aug 19, 2011

Want a yardstick for how far into the post-ironic era we have drifted? This summer, TV newsman Don Lemon published a memoir, “Transparent,” in which he came out as gay and talked about being sexually abused as a boy. Yet he got far more attention for a snarky three-minute segment that Jon Stewart devoted to him last month on “The Daily Show,” titled, “CNN Anchor Don Lemon appears not to care fo...
A decade after horror of Sept. 11, a new kind of storytelling

Aug 19, 2011

When details were released of the recent raid to hunt down and kill Osama Bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound, a daring narrative complete with Navy SEALs and Blackhawk helicopters, many readers of international thrillers probably had the same thought: Sounds like a scene from a Brad Thor novel. That’s because Thor, like other stars in the thriller-writing genre such as Christopher Reich, Vince...
Iraq’s last king lives on in Tintin comics

Aug 16, 2011

BAGHDAD (AFP) ― Everyone here knows that the July 14 bridge, a convenient route to the U.S. Embassy and government offices in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, marks a 1958 coup when Iraq’s last king was murdered. But not many know that King Faisal II lives on in the classic “Tintin” comic books. This includes his own cousin, the man who would be king in the unlikely event that the Iraqi monarchy ...
American writer talks about owning Brooklyn deli with his Korean in-laws

Aug 15, 2011

Korean-language edition of Ben Ryder Howe’s memoir ‘My Korean Deli’ released For Ben Ryder Howe, a self-identified WASP working as a literary man on the Upper East Side, owning a deli in Brooklyn was certainly an adventure. It was in 2002 that Howe, married to Korean-born corporate lawyer Gab, decided to buy a deli in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. It was a family business with his mother-in-law, Kay, ...
Light side of Fitzgerald

Aug 12, 2011

“A Short Autobiography” By F. Scott Fitzgerald and James L. W. West III (Scribner) An often light but still poignant side of F. Scott Fitzgerald is evident in this compilation of 19 of his previously published items and articles, written mostly for popular magazines during 1920-1940. Edited by Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III, the collection is billed as an autobiography because the fam...
Imagined Garden of Eden

Aug 12, 2011

Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden By Brook Wilensky-Lanford (Grove Press) It’s a challenge: Choose the location for the original Garden of Eden from the 17 suggested by this book’s new map. In the first two chapters of the book of Genesis, God is quoted as pinpointing the fruitful area where Adam and Eve would live. He names four rivers flowing out of it. Two of the rivers, the...
Parenting guide for the college years urges empathy

Aug 12, 2011

It hadn’t occurred to me that my husband and I might skip the college family weekend this fall, when our older son becomes a freshman. But the authors of “Don’t Tell Me What to Do, Just Send Money” have given me pause. Parents and their college-age sons and daughters are tied by an electronic umbilical cord. That’s the good news ― and the bad news. It takes some effort on everyone’s part if a fa...