LIFE&STYLE
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 th...
Jun 1, 2016
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 devel...
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 coun...
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 pri...
May 26, 2016
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 a...
May 25, 2016
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...
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 ...
With Booker win behind her, Han expands realm of expression
Han Kang says she was never a best-selling writer until now
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 th...
‘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...
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...
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 (K...
May 19, 2016
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 ...
May 18, 2016
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 ...
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....