Family LifeBy Akhil Sharma (W.W. Norton & Co)Akhil Sharma’s new novel, “Family Life,” should come with a warning sticker: Heartbreak ahead. This slender book, hardly more than 200 pages, follows 8-year-old Ajay Mishra and his family from India to Queens, where Ajay’s older brother, Birju, fulfills his parents’ immigrant hopes by gaining acceptance to the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. Then, their world is shattered when a swimming pool accident leaves Birju severely brain-damaged ― pu

Financial reporter William D. Cohan likes alpha males in troubled waters, and he wades into especially brackish murk for his new investigative book, “The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite and the Corruption of Our Great Universities.”The scandal grew out of a spring break party on March 13, 2006, for which the Blue Devils’ varsity men’s lacrosse team hired two strippers. One woman accused three players of raping her in the bathroom of the off-campus house shared

Hong Soon-young, a retired diplomat who served as South Korea's foreign minister, unification minister and ambassador to five countries, died Wednesday at age 77, officials said.Hong, who was the foreign minister from 1998-2000, was considered one of the best known diplomats in South Korea. He entered the foreign service in 1961 and served in various other posts, including ambassador to Pakistan, Malaysia, Russia, Germany and China.Hong served as unification minister from 2001-2002. (Yonhap) 

Korean author Bae Su-ah has been invited to the PEN World Voices Festival, an annual literary festival underway in New York, LTI Korea said.Bae is one of about 150 writers from 30 countries who have been invited to the weeklong event, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Two other Korean writers, Hwang Sok-yong and Kim Young-ha, participated in the festival in 2009 and 2011, respectively.During the festival, Bae will read excerpts from her short story “Highway with Green Apples.” It

Danji owner-chef’s focus on food, not Michelin stars

A mountain fortress southeast of Seoul is highly likely to make it onto UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites, the government said Tuesday. An experts’ panel under the UNESCO World Heritage Committee that deliberates on new additions to the list has recommended Namhansanseong Fortress for inscription in its recent report, according to the Cultural Heritage Administration. A final decision is due in June when the committee meets in Qatar, but it seldom overturns recommendations from the Internati

Korea Toastmasters held its national conference on Saturday and Sunday, with key speeches from International Toastmasters president George Yen and former Toastmasters world public speaking champion Lance Miller.The group is the local branch of Toastmasters, an international nonprofit organization with nearly 300,000 members that focuses on adult education in communication and leadership.Almost 300 people attended the conference, up from 220 last year, according to conference chairperson Minju Le

After nearly selling out of the first edition of Korean slang guide “As Much as a Rat’s Tail,” authors Peter Liptak and Lee Si-woo are working on an update. The revision has ended up being more involved than planned, with 30 pages of new content, a set of new flashcards and revisions of the existing design and content.They also held a contest for the design of the new cover. Replacing the timid rodent on the first edition is a sunglass-donning street rat, dancing “Gangnam Style.”  “It just spoke

After adopting children from Korea more than 20 years ago, two American mothers and longtime friends, Debbi Kent and Joan Suwalsky, were both determined to raise their children in an environment that would expose their families to their kids’ native culture as much as possible. Making regular visits to the country over the past two decades, the two mothers fell in love with all things Korean culture, and more specifically, were fascinated by the tradition and history of Korean arts and crafts. “

Moon Young-me’s biography of her mother Faye Pinchbeck Moon published in English

The Korea National Opera’s latest performance of “La Traviata” on Sunday has raised the local standards of Giuseppe Verdi’s most beloved opera by every measure, with impressive singing and acting by the lead characters, sumptuous sets and sublime music. Canadian soprano Joyce El-Khoury was convincing as Violetta Valery, the sick Parisian courtesan who finds her true love, Alfredo, just as her life draws to a close. Although her coloratura in the first act wasn’t so impressive, she gave a vivid a

ALAMOGORDO, New Mexico (AP) ― A decades-old urban legend was put to rest Saturday when workers for a documentary film production company recovered “E.T.” Atari game cartridges from a heap of garbage buried deep in the New Mexico desert.The “Atari grave” was, until that moment, a highly debated tale among gaming enthusiasts and other self-described geeks for 30 years. The story claimed that in its death throes, the video game company sent about a dozen truckloads of cartridges of what many call t