Duke writes about his mother’s death in book for bereaved children as part of National Day of Reflection
The Duke of Sussex has reflected on the pain of his mother’s death in a foreword to a book for children of health workers who have died in the coronavirus pandemic.
Prince Harry wrote that the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 when he was 12 had left “a huge hole inside of me” but that it was eventually filled with “love and support”, according to the Times.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Bust in Holy Trinity church was modelled by tomb-maker Nicholas Johnson, research finds
They say you should never meet your heroes, which has been just as well for literature fans who for centuries have been told they would never see an accurate likeness of William Shakespeare.
Until recently, there were only two definitive portraits of the playwright widely regarded to be the greatest writer in the English language and both were thought to have been painted posthumously. Art critics have even argued that the most famous – the Cobbe portrait – was more likely to have been a painting of courtier Sir Thomas Overbury, not the Bard at all.
Continue reading...President Paul Kagame – long feted by leaders in the west – is accused of serial human rights abuses in expansive new book
A devastating new book will accuse Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame – long feted by his prominent international supporters as the model of visionary new African leadership – of being a serial human rights abuser, including for his role in a sustained campaign of assassinating his rivals in exile.
Written by Michela Wrong, the author who covered the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when more than 800,000 people – largely ethnic Tutsis as well as moderate Hutus – were killed by Hutu militias over 100 days, Do Not Disturb represents one of the most far-reaching historical revisions of Kagame and his regime.
Continue reading...Available online
Eternal youth and beauty exist only online in this thoroughly modern adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s fable, which counts Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley among its impressive cast
If Dorian Gray were reborn in our age, it seems entirely fitting that he would be a social media star obsessing over his image. So it makes great intuitive sense for this adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel to situate its protagonist in the centre of the digital whirl of 2021.
There is now no physical painting: the deal made with Basil Hallward allows Dorian eternal youth and beauty online, but age marks him in the real world, his face becoming etched with the ugliness of his accumulating misdeeds (snorting coke, catfishing and late night hookups). The pandemic is incorporated into the drama and enhances the storyline as Dorian wears his mask to cover his ageing face.
Continue reading...Tensions at a school for privileged girls in Rwanda foreshadow the 1994 genocide in this surprisingly bright, light-touch debut
This debut novel by French-Rwandan author Scholastique Mukasonga, originally published in 2012 and the first of her books to be published in the UK, could have been called Privilege and Prejudice. Translated by Melanie Mauthner, it is a school story like no other, set in the late 1970s in a lycée nestled in the mountains of Rwanda, near the source of the Nile (“‘We’re so close to heaven,’ whispers Mother Superior, clasping her hands together”), where the pupils, daughters of the rich, are taught a little of God and a lot about how to maintain the status quo.
The school is notionally a part of the government’s efforts to promote female education in Rwanda, but within limits: the lycée is a white intrusion in Africa, built under the direction of “white overseers who did nothing but look at large sheets of paper they unrolled like bolts of cloth from the Pakistani shop, and who went crazy with rage when they called the black foremen over, as if they were breathing fire”. The girls are to be the drivers of change, while strictly following rules: they must speak French – Swahili is forbidden – and are taught that “History meant Europe, and Geography, Africa. Africa had no history… it was the Europeans who had discovered Africa and dragged it into history.”
Continue reading...The Arab Strap vocalist on late-night horror chats with his mum, spending time with Alan Partridge, and bingeing on Succession
Born in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1973, Aidan Moffat is the vocalist of indie rock band Arab Strap, which he founded in 1995 with Malcolm Middleton. Characterised by Moffat’s half-spoken vocals over lo-fi instrumentation, the band gained international acclaim with 1996 single The First Big Weekend; they went on to release six studio albums before splitting in 2006 and reforming in 2016. Since 2002, Moffat has released music under the name L Pierre, and collaborated with artists including Mogwai and Bill Wells. Arab Strap’s first album in 16 years, As Days Get Dark, is was released this month on Rock Action.
Continue reading...The former head of Shin Bet came to realize all-out war against terrorists only deepened an existential mire
Ami Ayalon is a retired Israeli warrior with much more history than he needs to fill this compact, compelling memoir. Three years older than the state of Israel, he spent the first two-thirds of his life fighting Arabs, first as a member of Shayetet 13, the Israeli equivalent of the Navy Seals, then as commander of the Israeli navy and finally as head of Shin Bet, the internal security service, its motto: “Defender that shall not be seen.”
Related: Protesters silencing speakers like me won’t solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem | Ami Ayalon
Continue reading...In A Little Devil in America, Hanif Abdurraqib set out to celebrate black artists across music, dance, comedy and more, who succeeded even when their own country refused to honour them
When I began A Little Devil in America, I was thinking about Josephine Baker. The title of the book comes from Baker, from her speech at the March on Washington in 1963. It is a speech that is often overlooked. The legacy of the march so often centres on its male speakers (Martin Luther King Jr, A Philip Randolph), and Baker was well past her most notable prime. At 57, she chose to return to the US from France and make a small speech – but also to confront the country she’d left and vowed to not return to. The speech is at times tender, at times funny, at times teeming with rage. There was a fullness to it; Baker considering the vastness of her life and the many lives she’d lived. Her speech is defiant and brilliant, punctuated by Baker aligning her experiences with the national plight of black people in America:
You know, friends, that I do not lie to you when I tell you I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, ’cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world.
Continue reading...Sathnam Sanghera speaks out against ‘vicious’ abuse he is receiving over his bestselling book: ‘Empire has been weaponised by the right wing, ever since Black Lives Matter’
Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireland, a journey through Britain’s imperial past, has been a bestseller since it was pubished last month, acclaimed by critics as “unflinching … moving and stimulating” (the Guardian), and “excellent” and “balanced” (the Sunday Times). And yet, from the British public the author has received handwritten hate mail, and thousands of abusive tweets from “imperially nostalgic racists”, as he succinctly replied, some of them verging, he says, on death threats.
Related: Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera and Slave Empire by Padraic X Scanlan – review
Continue reading...Drawing on her own cathartic relationship with role-playing games, Leilani uses gaming as a narrative device and an inspiration in her acclaimed debut
There is an extraordinary and telling moment in Raven Leilani’s acclaimed novel Luster, about a young black woman who has an affair with a middle-aged white man and ends up living with his family. The woman, Edie, is heading back to her lover’s house with his adopted black daughter, Akila, when the pair are stopped and questioned by two police officers. Although Edie is compliant, Akila – younger and much less worldly – challenges the cops and gets thrust to the ground and restrained. The confrontation is rife with fear and tension, and when it’s over (diffused when Akila’s white mother intervenes), the first thing Edie and Akila do is go inside, sit down and play a video game.
Much of the fervid discussion around Luster has focused on Leilani’s astute and witty analysis of sexual politics and racial power structures in the 21st-century US. But a key part of her acutely realised portrayal of a millennial protagonist coping with crappy jobs and crappier love affairs is Edie’s natural relationship with digital culture and technology. At a time in which video game references are still mostly consigned to YA and sci-fi books, Leilani has made them a central component of a literary novel.
Continue reading...Victor Obiols told he had wrong ‘profile’, the second case after Dutch writer resigned from same role
The Catalan translator for the poem that American writer Amanda Gorman read at US president Joe Biden’s inauguration has said he has been removed from the job because he had the wrong “profile”.
It was the second such case in Europe after Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld resigned from the job of translating Gorman’s work following criticism that a black writer was not chosen.
Continue reading...What’s the most common transgression people feel guilty about? Sex, of course. Now, in a controversial new French book, Catholic clergymen unveil some surprising intimate details
Name: Confession.
Age: 1,000 years old.
Continue reading...Author donates proceeds from book about Notre-Dame fire to project to save cathedral in Brittany
The bestselling British author Ken Follett is donating the proceeds from his book about the Notre-Dame fire to restore a cathedral in Brittany.
Follet is giving €148,000 (£127,000) towards a multimillion euro project to save Saint-Samson de Dol-de-Bretagne cathedral.
Continue reading...While books that combine recipes with personal narrative have always existed, they’re increasingly becoming the norm
“In the early stages, I would read it and I would cry, have tears streaming down my face,” Chinese-Australian cook and food writer Hetty Lui McKinnon says of her latest cookbook, To Asia, With Love. “They’re not sad tears … it’s me feeling this happiness of reaching this point where I’m able to tell this story.”
McKinnon says she’s never been the authority on Asian cuisine like Kylie Kwong – her first cookbook, Community, told the story of starting the salad delivery business that brought her to prominence – but her fourth cookbook is her most personal yet. In it, the recipes and McKinnon’s own words reflect on the influences of her Chinese heritage and upbringing in Australia.
Continue reading...The Pulitzer-winning author on difficult second novel syndrome, using humour to explore trauma, and the return to a ‘more efficient version of American imperialism’
The Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s second novel, The Committed, is the sequel to his celebrated debut, The Sympathizer, a spy thriller set against the backdrop of the Vietnam war that was both a New York Times bestseller and winner of the 2016 Pulitzer prize for fiction. The Sympathizer established Nguyen as both a literary star and an advocate for displaced people around the world. In The Committed, his unnamed protagonist arrives, as a refugee, in 1970s Paris, looking to shore up his identity on a diet of drug-dealing gangsterism and poststructuralist theory. Nguyen is a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity, and comparative literature at the University of Southern California as well as a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.
You’ve written about the ease of writing your first novel. How was it sitting down to write your second with a Pulitzer under your belt?
It was certainly more challenging, not necessarily because of heightened expectations but because of the publicity around the Pulitzer. I got very distracted doing interviews and lectures and all of that. With The Sympathizer I had two years of total concentration because nobody knew who I was. With The Committed, I had to write it in bits and pieces with lots of interruptions.
Poet, acclaimed for her performance at Joe Biden’s inauguration, tweeted ‘this is the reality of black girls’
Amanda Gorman, the poet who won acclaim for her performance at Joe Biden’s inauguration, has told of being followed home and accosted by a security guard who allegedly claimed she looked suspicious.
She said the incident, on Friday night, was emblematic of “the reality of black girls” in the US, in which “one day you’re called an icon” but the next day considered a threat.
Continue reading...Robots on coral reefs, vast barriers to hold back the glaciers, simulated volcanic eruptions to offset global heating ... Can technology repair the mess we have made? Elizabeth Kolbert is not convinced
Elizabeth Kolbert’s favourite movie is the end-of-the-world comedy Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. For those who need a quick recap, this cold war film features a deranged US air force general who orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union using weapons developed by a mad Nazi scientist played by Peter Sellers. A last-minute glitch almost forestalls an apocalyptic war, but a gung-ho B-52 pilot has other ideas. He opens the bomb doors and mounts the H-bomb as if it were a horse, waving his hat and whooping as he rides the missile towards the world’s oblivion. No heroism could be more misguided. No movie could end with a blunter message: how on Earth can we humans trust ourselves with planet-altering technology?
The same absurdly serious question lies at the heart of Kolbert’s new book, Under a White Sky. The Sixth Extinction, her previous book, won a Pulitzer prize for its investigation into how mankind has devastated the natural world. Now she has widened her gaze to whether we can remedy this with ingenious technological fixes – or make things worse. “There was definitely a question left hanging: now we have become such a dominant force on planet Earth, and created so many problems through our intervention, what happens next?”, she says.
Continue reading...We make changes to children’s books all the time. It’s important to ask: does the cultural value of this book outweigh the potential harm?
Children’s literature sits at an awkward crossroads, where it is expected to be art, education and moral instruction. Children’s books are designed to teach our kids to read, to teach them about the world, about themselves and their bodies, about how to be kind, about society’s morals and values.
This is true of all children’s literature, but it is particularly true of books by Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr Seuss), which do all these things deliberately and explicitly. Which is why I’m not at all surprised that Seuss’s estate has decided to cease publication of six titles due to their racist portrayal of people of colour. To do otherwise would be disrespectful to Seuss’s legacy of kindness and empathy.
Continue reading...Are you left scrambling for paints and glue-guns every year? Never fear – here are some options that Donna Ferguson and nine-year-old Flora put together in less than 30 minutes
It’s World Book Day in the UK and Ireland today, one many parents approach each year with a stomach-clenching sense of dread. I know, because I used to be one of them. I cannot sew, I am useless at craft and I am not the most organised parent in the world. Or even in our house.
But my daughter Flora is nine, and I’ve learned a few tricks over the years. Armed with just four essential items – a professional face-paint kit, safety pins, a stash of coloured card and ribbons – I can throw together a World Book Day outfit in minutes, using the clothes in my daughter’s wardrobe. Here are five options using things most of us will already have in the house, and a good daytime activity that will cheer up those still remote-learning in the UK.
Continue reading...The 90-year-old Irish writer will be named commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres on Sunday
Edna O’Brien is to receive France’s highest cultural distinction, and be named commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres this week.
Related: Edna O’Brien on turning 90: ‘I can’t pretend that I haven’t made mistakes’
Continue reading...