Negina Azimi felt shock and fear like never before when she heard that Taliban fighters had entered Kabul on 15 August. As an outspoken female artist in Afghanistan, she knew they would come for her. “We heard reports that the Taliban might raid houses. I was scared because I live in a very central neighbourhood and every room in my house is adorned with the kind of art the Taliban won’t approve of,” she says, referring to paintings that feature …
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The Boy With Two Hearts review – an Afghan refugee family’s story of fear and hope
This true story, which opens under Taliban rule in the city of Herat in 2000, has gained urgent resonance since the fall of Kabul this summer. The play’s premiere came as British officials travelled to Afghanistan to meet Taliban leaders with the agenda including women’s rights. “You want your children growing up in a country run by thugs?” asks Fariba (Géhane Strehler) when she gives a speech in a school playground. Fariba has three sons but feels a sense of …
Read More »De Gaulle, model for Macron
De Gaulle. By Julian Jackson. Belknap Press; 928 pages; $39.95. Published in Britain as “A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle”; Allen Lane; £35. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor’s Picks. An acrimonious divorce from the EU looks increasingly likely for Britain How America’s TSA is watching travellers How the grotesque online culture wars fuel populism A tarnished victory for Emmerson Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe The many lives of …
Read More »George Sand’s unfinished legacy
IN 1876 the mayor of Nohant-Vic, a small village in the heart of France, reported the death of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin. With the names of her late husband and father duly noted, the record states that she was a baroness, “aged 71 years, without any known profession”. Yet a nom de plume—George Sand—appeared in parentheses. Other female writers of the late-18th and 19th century received similarly dismissive treatment. Jane Austen’s epitaph emphasised her “charity, devotion, faith and purity” and …
Read More »Uniformity is the watchword for the new Elizabeth line
THE Elizabeth line, the latest addition to the London Underground, is a feat of engineering. When it gets rolling in December, it will stretch more than 60 miles from Reading and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. It required ten new stations and 26 miles of new tunnels; those tunnels were created by eight 1,000-tonne boring machines through some of the most densely populated urban space in the world. The £14.8bn ($19.5bn) project has …
Read More »Rescuing Adam Smith from myth and misrepresentation
Adam Smith: Father of Economics. By Jesse Norman. Basic Books; 416 pages; $30. Published in Britain as “Adam Smith: What He Thought and Why it Matters” by Allen Lane; £25. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor’s Picks. What is at stake in Zimbabwe’s election? Sam Brownback makes the right noises about religious liberty Under Donald Trump, more cops are acting as immigration-enforcement agents Australia’s Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment will merge Loneliness …
Read More »A novel crafted from Custer’s Last Stand
The Removes. By Tatjana Soli. Sarah Crichton Books, 384 pages; $27. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor’s Picks. Paul Manafort goes on trial The Vatican shows an overdue decisiveness on sexual abuse Taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugar really do curb vice The venomous ideology of religious intolerance Why do people love “Love Island”? Why tariffs are bad taxes THE United States was days from its centennial when the Battle of the …
Read More »Yan Lianke’s dark satire of modern China
The Day the Sun Died. By Yan Lianke. Translated by Carlos Rojas. Chatto & Windus; 352 pages; £14.99. To be published in America by Grove Press in December; $22. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor’s Picks. Remembering Tessa Tennant, giant of green finance An acrimonious divorce from the EU looks increasingly likely for Britain How America’s TSA is watching travellers How the grotesque online culture wars fuel populism A tarnished victory for …
Read More »The rise and fall of bees
Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees. By Thor Hanson. Basic Books; 304 pages; $27. Icon Books; £16.99. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor’s Picks. The most influential role in baseball may cease to exist How domestic violence affects the economy The rise and the rainfall of the Roman empire “Iceman” tells a primal story without words What is “shadowbanning”? Is it time to automate politicians? BEES are wasps that went vegetarian. …
Read More »Pentti Sammallahti, Finland’s top photographer
UNDER a low sun, a frog with a thuggish expression swims alone in a pond, its black reflection a crisply outlined mirror image on the still water. It stares straight ahead; an eye-to-eye confrontation seems imminent. This sinister yet amusing picture was taken by Pentti Sammallahti, a 68-year-old Finnish photographer with an unusual status: he is at once feted and deliberately low-profile. His modest prices—prints start at €600 ($702)—are part of the explanation. Peter Fetterman, who exhibited Mr Sammallahti’s work …
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