WHEN Zaradasht Ahmed, a Norwegian-Kurdish director, began shooting his war documentary, a complicated process spanning more than five years awaited him. “Nowhere to Hide” (2016, pictured), an immersive account of a male nurse working and raising a family in Iraq, was shot collaboratively by Mr Ahmed and the nurse himself, Nori Sharif. Living in the “no-go” zone of Jalawla, Mr Sharif could access people and places which organisations and journalists could not. Mr Ahmed taught him how to film—and ended …

“FINE” (“the end”), howled the front page of La Gazetto dello Sport, Italy’s most popular sporting newspaper. “Apocalisse, disastro” wailed Corriere dello Sport, one of its rivals. Muted supporters, some of them weeping, filed out of bars across the land. An impotent 0-0 draw against Sweden in Milan’s San Siro stadium on November 13th, following a 1-0 defeat in Stockholm three days before, meant that the impossible had happened. Italy’s four World Cup titles have only been surpassed by Brazil. Yet the Azzurri have failed to qualify for …

ANY student of religion will soon be struck by this paradox: a single set of beliefs and practices can either inspire people to great acts of altruism and courage, or else be harnessed by the strong and scurrilous as a way of justifying themselves and manipulating people. Zimbabwe exemplifies that principle better than most countries. As Robert Mugabe’s rule became more despotic, Christian churches emerged as one of the few independent forces that retained the ability to challenge him, in …

DURING the Balkan wars of the 1990s, old fault-lines of religion and ethnicity seemed to be opening up across Europe, with tragic results. Muslim nations lined up to support Bosnia; Europe’s Catholic heart rediscovered old links with the Croats; and Serbia received moral support from an Orthodox fraternity linking Russia, Greece and Cyprus. But after 1999, when NATO bombing forced Serbia to back down, talk of civilisational clashes in the Balkans receded as the region fell under broadly Western influence. …

ALMOST half a century after Richard Nixon declared war on cancer, there has been plenty of progress. But there is still no cure. One reason is that “cancer” is an umbrella term that covers many different diseases. Although the fundamental mechanism is always the same—the uncontrolled proliferation of cells—the details vary enormously. Leukaemia is not the same as colon cancer. Even within a particular type of cancer, one patient’s disease will differ from another’s. Different mutations, for instance, will affect …

Iran: A Modern History. By Abbas Amanat. Yale University Press; 1,000 pages; $40. To be published in Britain in January; £30. ABBAS AMANAT is an authority on Iranian culture and political history. In his new book he presents the past five centuries of Iran’s history in its Persian, Shia context. At 1,000 pages, it is not for the fainthearted. But Mr Amanat is a skilful narrator whose use of sources and anecdotes is illuminating. His book should be read by …

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

ONE way or another, Europe’s Muslim landscape will be altered by the drama that is now swirling around one of the continent’s best-known Islamic thinkers.  It was announced this week that “by mutual agreement” Tariq Ramadan was taking a leave of absence from his job as a professor of Islamic studies at Oxford University. The 55-year-old scholar, born in Switzerland to a famous Egyptian family, is facing multiple accusations of rape and sexual misconduct to which he has reacted with …

This review contains plot details of “Alias Grace” THIS week, the Supreme Court paved the way for the execution of Vernon Madison, a 67-year-old from Alabama convicted of murdering a police officer three decades ago. Having suffered strokes, Mr Madison no longer remembers his crime, and is diagnosed with both dementia and amnesia. All nine justices agreed that discontinuity in a person’s coherence does not prevent the state from carrying out punishment.  Upgrade your inbox Receive our Daily Dispatch and …

CHARLES DARWIN was fascinated by bird communication. In “The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex” he devoted equal space to both the sorts of sounds that emerge from birds’ beaks and the more percussive noises that they make with other parts of their bodies, such as their feet and feathers. He speculated that both types of sounds were important for sending signals to others, but was unsure if this was true. In the years that have passed …