During his short life, Yi Yook-sa (1904-44), a Korean poet and independence activist, composed only about 40 poems. Yet his compelling poems, written during the darkest period of modern Korean history, captured the heroic spirit of the Korean people’s resistance and the nationalist movement against Japanese colonial rule. “The Vertex” is an anthology of 36 of Yi’s poems, in both Korean and English, compiled and translated by Lee Sung-il, a professor emeritus of English literature at Yonsei Unive

Scholar given Korean Literature Translation Award for ‘House with a Sunken Courtyard’

David Hockney: The Biography, 1975-2012By Christopher Simon Sykes (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) More than halfway through the second volume of his vivid, intimate biography of British artist David Hockney, Christopher Simon Sykes describes the moment in the 1980s when Hockney discovers the creative possibilities of the photocopy machine. A natural talent who drew from the moment he could pick up a pencil, Hockney falls deeply in love with the density of copier inks ― “the most beautiful black I had

Blue LabyrinthBy Douglas Preston and/Lincoln Child (Grand Central Pulishing)A family secret over 100 years old comes back to haunt FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s latest thriller, “Blue Labyrinth.” A knock on Pendergast’s door propels the story when it’s opened to reveal a tied-up corpse. The deceased is his estranged son. What’s found on the body leads Pendergast to an abandoned mine, and as he discovers deception and treachery, he also learns uncomf

The Laughing MonstersBy Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Denis Johnson, winner of the National Book Award for his Vietnam-era opus “Tree of Smoke,” has jumped genres again in “The Laughing Monsters,” a new thriller set in Africa. Johnson has done chameleon-like genre switches before, producing the noirish “Nobody Move” that evokes Elmore Leonard’s style and a Western of sorts, “Train Dreams,” that has a dash of Cormac McCarthy. Both books are solid works in their own right. “The Laughing M

Sometimes, the characters in Jane Smiley’s latest novel resemble the Osage-orange hedge that separates the field from the back acreage of Walter Langdon’s Iowa farm: “horse-high, bull-strong, and hog-tight.” Meaning they’re tough. Meaning they take what life throws at them ― drought, freezes, economic catastrophe, death, war, progress ― and carry on. Meaning any sense of optimism is hard won and that good fortune is never taken for granted: “That was a piece of luck, Walter. But what would we do

The Burning RoomBy Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)Politics often seeps into police investigations, especially when a high-profile case has officials from the city to the state level jockeying for a piece of the action.LAPD detective Harry Bosch has seen enough of politics interfering with his investigations through the years. Now, as he supposedly enters the last year of his career, Harry is even more tired of this intrusion that erupts constantly in “The Burning Room,” the excellent 19th novel

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) ― Former President George W. Bush said Tuesday that he believes his brother Jeb Bush should run for president but ultimately the former Florida governor must make a decision regardless of any pressure from the family. Bush said his father, former President George H.W. Bush, also thinks the ex-Florida governor should run in the 2016 White House race. “I can tell you I can speak for 41,” Bush said, referring to his father, the 41st president of the United States between

In 1914, Keystone Studios released two short films that gave a world marching to war a reason to laugh. Their titles, “Kid Auto Races at Venice” and “Mabel’s Strange Predicament,” are far less memorable than the character they helped to introduce: the Tramp. Wearing oversized shoes and baggy clothes, carrying a cane, and sporting a derby and just a dash of moustache, actor Charlie Chaplin waddled onto the screen. Two years and dozens of shorts later, Chaplin was a global favorite. Over time, the

It’s around 3 p.m. on Oct. 1, the biggest day in Marlon James’ career ― if not his life. His third novel, “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” hit bookstores with more buzz than a swarm of bees.James is on his phone with prominent Jamaican blogger Annie Paul, who has just published her interview with him online. The blog post, in which James discusses his novel about the 1976 attempted assassination of Bob Marley in Kingston, has upset editors at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, e

Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers & Swells: The Best of Early Vanity Fair Edited by Graydon Carter (Penguin Press)Before Buzzfeed, before Spy, before Rolling Stone and the Paris Review, there was Vanity Fair. The smart-set magazine launched a century ago became famous as a sort of barometer of the Jazz Age and for its murderers’ row of heavy-hitting contributors. Dorothy Parker, Carl Sandburg, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein were just a few who wrote for the magazine. “Bohemians” collects

Spoiled BratsBy Simon Rich(Little, Brown and Co.)Feel the humiliation of the widowed guinea pig, so beaten down he contemplates suicide and questions his Christian faith. See through the eyes of the doting parents, who look past the signs of demonism ― the pentagram birthmark and grasping claws ― to find a flawless little boy. Befriend a tortured Christmas elf who is caught in a boy’s sick, sexual exploits. Simon Rich gives us each of these characters in “Spoiled Brats,” an anthology as endlessl

Sometimes the WolfBy Urban Waite (William Morrow)A father-and-son relationship, perhaps broken beyond repair, fuels Urban Waite’s engrossing novel that skillfully exposes the complicated emotions that can stymie a once close family while also working as a superb action-adventure tale. In “Sometimes the Wolf,” the sins of the father have rained down on Bobby Drake for 12 years. Bobby, a sheriff’s deputy in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, wonders what his life would have been like had his f

The Killer Next DoorBy Alex Marwood (Penguin Books)Desperation brings six people to a decaying Victorian apartment house where the tenants’ desolation pales in comparison with one neighbor’s despicable acts. Alex Marwood’s second stand-alone novel delivers a multilayered plot that succeeds as crime fiction, a gothic tale and a village mystery ― all with an edge. With the apartment building substituting for a village, “The Killer Next Door” balances a shrewd look at people living on the edge of s

The era of modern literature in Korea began in 1894 when the government launched sweeping reforms which called for establishing public schools, writing in Hangul, the Korean alphabet, instead of Chinese characters and opening the door to foreign literary works.A special exhibition is underway in Seoul to offer an overview of modern Korean literature, which brewed in a tumultuous period characterized by the fall of the monarchy at the end of the Joseon era (1392-1910), the rise of Japanese imperi