The last time South Korea imposed martial law, Gwangju endured a deadly crackdown. Han Kang, the Nobel Prize-winning author, told its story in “Human Acts.”
The first week print sales nearly matched Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land,” and put her well ahead of Prince Harry’s “Spare.” And she did it while selling only at Target, avoiding Amazon and bookstores.
“It is an important idea and a serious challenge for me, at which I consistently fail,” says the author of the best-selling “Braiding Sweetgrass.” Her new book is “The Serviceberry.”
Set in a small Irish village in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1962, Niall Williams' latest novel avoids cliché by investing specificity and life into characters and places.