Most Popular
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Ador CEO denies allegations, accuses Hybe of mistreating NewJeans
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Korea’s homegrown nanosatellite successfully launches into space
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[Herald Interview] 'Amid aging population, Korea to invite more young professionals from overseas'
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Nicaragua shuts down Seoul embassy
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Medical reform committee kicks off despite boycott from doctors
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Hybe's multilabel system tested amid conflict with Ador
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SNU profs to suspend treatment for one day
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Rocket engine expert, ex-NASA exec to lead Korea's new space agency
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Over-50s, men, single-person households take up majority of those filing for bankruptcy
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SK hynix pledges W20tr to ramp up DRAM production at home
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‘Ink and Bone’ takes a frightening turn to the supernatural
“Ink and Bone” By Lisa Unger Touchstone (352 pages, $24.99) The Hollows, an idyllic sounding town in upstate New York, keeps calling to author Lisa Unger. This fictional town that attracts those seeing a respite from New York City or want a smaller community to call home also has a dark side that rears its head and takes residents on emotional roller-coasters that test their mettle and moral compass. Each of Unger’s novels set in The Hollows follows a different set of characters with the town a
June 8, 2016
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Exploration of what it means to be human
“Becoming Wise” By Krista Tippett The Penguin Press (288 pages, $28) Most of us can only dream of the dinner parties Krista Tippett could put together. We’re lucky, then, that her new book is the next best thing to an invitation to sit down, make ourselves at home and prepare for a mind-expanding exploration of what it means to be human. With “Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Mystery and Art of Living,” Tippett expands on interviews that became fascinating fodder for her award-winning NPR pro
June 8, 2016
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Actress tells her life in love letters to men in her life
“Dear Mr. You” By Mary-Louise Parker Scribner (228 pages, $25) In the imaginative and evocative “Dear Mr. You,” sexy “Weeds” actress Mary-Louise Parker hints at her compelling life story through a series of love letters to key men in her life. Each letter is a chapter, addressed to figures she mostly names only as Yacqui Indian Boy, Blue, Big Feet, Little Owl and the like. (You may find yourself googling her to try to suss out details.) As she explains in the titular first chapter, she’s writin
June 8, 2016
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‘Korea, a culture of desires’: Le Clezio
According to Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, it is significant that the Korean word for “desire” -- “baram” -- is also a homonym of the word for “wind.” “Like the wind, desire is rough, intense and sudden, but it also provides useful inspiration. Isn’t this what all literature attempts to show?” posed the French-Mauritian writer and Nobel laureate at a lecture titled “Korea, a Culture of Desires” in Seoul on Wednesday. “Literature has traditionally depicted diverse forms of desire
June 2, 2016
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Unnamed 'Oxygen Thief' becomes self-published success
NEW YORK (AP) -- The fair-skinned man with the hoodie and dark ski cap sits on a bench outside McNally Jackson Books in downtown Manhattan, where neither patrons nor employees seem aware that he's the author of a work so in demand at the store that it’s often out of stock. Known to his growing fan base as “Anonymous,” he has given us one of the more unusual self-published successes: “Diary of an Oxygen Thief,” a 147-page fictionalized memoir, or autobiographical novel, depending on how much of t
June 1, 2016
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Fat and happy: No one tells author Lindy West what to do
Lindy West is a defender of bodies: women’s bodies, fat bodies, every body’s right to exist in whatever way, shape or form, unjudged and unassailed. “Everyone has a body,” she says. “We haven’t developed brain-in-jar technology yet.” Her writing puts forth the unfortunately radical proposition that each person’s body is that person’s own business.“It is the thing that most belongs to them. It’s not yours,” she points out over sake bombs and edamame dip, pot stickers and ahi tacos. It’s the most
June 1, 2016
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The worldwide war of keystrokes
“Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War” By Fred Kaplan Simon & Schuster (352 pages, $28) You’ve heard the complaining, from the White House on down, about the cyberattacks on our country. Well, yes, you guessed it: We started it. That’s one of the central thrusts of Fred Kaplan’s “Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War.” Because it pioneered computing, the U.S. intelligence agencies enjoyed decades of dominance over rivals, and even learned how to remotely wreak havoc on, say,
June 1, 2016
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Rare Shakespeare first edition sold for nearly 2m pounds
LONDON (AFP) - A rare first edition of British playwright William Shakespeare’s works from 1623 sold for 1.87 million pounds ($2.75 million) at Christie’s on Wednesday, the auction house said.A private U.S. collector bought the book as well as three subsequent Shakespeare collected works from 1632, 1664 and 1685 for a total of 2.48 million pounds.“The universality and timelessness of Shakespeare’s insight into human nature continues to engage and enthrall audiences the world over,” Margaret Ford
May 26, 2016
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Writers share Wodehouse comic fiction prize, win a pig
LONDON (AP) -- Satires set in financial-crisis Ireland and the high-end art world share this year’s Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction, whose rewards include a bottle of champagne and a pig. Paul Murray’s “The Mark of the Void” and Hannah Rothschild’s “The Improbability of Love” were named the award’s first joint winners on Wednesday. The authors won’t have to split the porcine prize for the award, named in honor of comic novelist P.G. Wodehouse. Murray and Rothschild will each
May 25, 2016
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Helen Mirren to narrate audiobook for Beatrix Potter story
NEW YORK (AP) -- Helen Mirren’s latest role is audio only. The award-winning British actress is narrating the recently rediscovered Beatrix Potter story “The Tale of Kitty-In-Boots,” Penguin Random House told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The hardcover and audio editions are scheduled for a Sept. 6 release. Actress Helen Mirren poses for photographers upon arrival at the screening of the film “La Fille Inconnue (The Unkown Girl)” at the 69th international film festival, Cannes, France, May 18
May 25, 2016
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Oil riches help keep alive bedouin poetry
ABU DHABI (AFP) -- The Middle East’s poetry equivalent of “Pop Idol” is helping to keep alive an age-old tradition using bedouin dialect, which is barely understood outside the Arabian Gulf. Apart from the glory, a Kuwaiti student took home five million dirhams ($1.4 million), the top prize in a television show followed by millions of poetry lovers across the region. With his Nabati poem, Rajih al-Hamidani was crowned 2016 champion of “Million’s Poet,” staged in oil-rich Abu Dhabi for a seventh
May 25, 2016
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With Booker win behind her, Han expands realm of expression
Novelist Han Kang is receiving a level of media attention that few in the literary profession have experienced. Fellow writers and critics welcome the international breakthrough for Korean literature that her Man Booker International Award win is anticipated to bring. Local papers are analyzing her award-winning novel, “The Vegetarian,” first published in 2007, sentence by sentence. There is even newfound interest in the field of literary translation. Amid the frenzy, however, what Han wants to
May 25, 2016
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World War II's endgame was also a beginning for Samuel Beckett
“A Country Road, A Tree: A Novel” By Jo Baker Knopf (304 pages, $26.95) When war came to Europe in 1939, Samuel Beckett was a published but largely unknown and unread Irish writer working in the long shadow of James Joyce, for whom he’d served as a literary secretary in Paris while the great man was writing “Finnegans Wake.” By war’s end six years later, Beckett was well on his way to becoming the markedly different writer who would shortly unveil “Waiting for Godot” and who is now justly rememb
May 25, 2016
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‘The Gene’ captures scientific method in all its fumbling glory
“The Gene: An Intimate History” By Siddhartha Mukherjee Scribner (592 pages, $30) “Like Pythagoras’s triangle, like the cave paintings at Lascaux, like the Pyramids in Giza, like the image of a fragile blue planet seen from outer space, the double helix of DNA is an iconic image, etched permanently into human history and memory,” Siddhartha Mukherjee writes in “The Gene: An Intimate History,” a fascinating and often sobering history of how humans came to understand the roles of genes in making
May 25, 2016
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Lara Feigel’s book tours Germany in the wake of WWII defeat
“The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich” By Lara Feigel Bloomsbury (443 pages, $32) It wasn’t just grunts and generals who crossed into Germany at the end of the Second World War. Along with Allied forces, a who’s who of writers, journalists, poets and filmmakers came to observe, report and reconstruct a shattered world. What they saw shocked and bewildered them. Major cities -- Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne -- had been heavily bombed. The plight of ordina
May 25, 2016
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Man Booker Prize pushes sales of 'The Vegetarian' overseas
Sales of Man Booker International Prize winner "The Vegetarian" by Korean novelist Han Kang have soared overseas, a Korean literary agency said Wednesday.Joseph Lee, president of Korean Literary (KL) Management, told Yonhap News Agency that the book has gone into a second printing of20,000 copies in the United Kingdom and 7,500 copies in the United States. KL Management handles the author's publication rights in foreign markets.He also said many countries, including India, Indonesia and some Ara
May 19, 2016
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Efforts that culminated in Han's Booker win
While novelist Han Kang’s Man Booker International Prize will likely be a much-desired boost for Korean literature’s push into the international stage, there has been a prolonged, if niche, interest in Korean literature from global audiences long before her novel “The Vegetarian” came into the spotlight. In fact, Korean literature has enjoyed sporadic success overseas, which may have culminated in Han’s win. In Germany, for example, Jeong Yu-jeong’s “Seven Years of Darkness” ranked in the Top 1
May 18, 2016
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J.K. Rowling honored by PEN for literary and humanitarian work
NEW YORK (AP) -- J.K. Rowling's passion for free expression is so strong it extends to someone she’d otherwise not care to discuss: Donald Trump. Speaking Monday night before hundreds gathered for PEN America's annual gala at the American Museum of Natural History, the “Harry Potter” creator noted that she opposed a recent petition calling for banning the presumptive Republican presidential nominee from entering the United Kingdom, saying such actions endanger everyone’s rights. “I find almost e
May 18, 2016
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Chilean-American writer Allende seeks inspiration after loss
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Isabel Allende begins writing all her books on Jan. 8. But when the day arrived this year, she struggled with writer's block. The practice began out of superstition. She started writing her first book, “The House of the Spirits,” on this date and it became an international best-seller. She then kept it as a discipline. But it was a strange year (she doesn’t want to call it a bad one). A year away from writing after great losses: her publicist, two friends, even h
May 18, 2016
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Garcia Marquez’s ashes arrive in Colombia ahead of tribute
BOGOTA (AFP) -- The ashes of Latin American literary great Gabriel Garcia Marquez have arrived in his native Colombia ahead of a Sunday ceremony at their final resting place, his son told Agence France-Presse. The Nobel-winning author of the groundbreaking epic “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” died in Mexico City in April 2014, at the age of 87. “The ashes are in Colombia,” Gonzalo Garcia Barcha, one of Marquez’s two sons, told AFP on Tuesday. The ceremony will be at the historic La Merced Clois
May 18, 2016