A government minister says Ye, the U.S. rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has recently been stripped of an Australian visa after he released his single “Heil Hitler.”
MELBOURNE, Australia — Ye, the U.S. rapper formerly known as Kanye West, was recently stripped of an Australian visa after he released his single “Heil Hitler,” a government minister said on Wednesday.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke revealed Ye has been traveling for years to Australia, where his wife of three years, Bianca Censori, was born. Her family live in Melbourne.
Burke said “Heil Hitler,” released in May, promoted Nazism. The song has been criticized as an antisemitic tribute to German dictator Adolf Hitler.
“He’s been coming to Australia for a long time. He’s got family here. And he’s made a lot of offensive comments that my officials looked at again once he released the ’Heil Hitler’ song and he no longer has a valid visa in Australia,” Burke told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“We have enough problems in this country already without deliberately importing bigotry,” Burke added.
Ye’s representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Australia’s Migration Act sets security and character requirements for non-citizens to enter the country.
Australia’s largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, have seen a spate of antisemitic attacks since the war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7, 2023.
When the Honduran musician Gustavo Castillo, stage name Tavo Man, was nominated for a Latin Grammy, it was seen as a triumph for Garifuna people around the world. It was the first time a Garifuna song was recognised in the prestigious awards, and was considered a milestone in the fight to preserve and popularise the culture.
Having his Garifuna song, Hun Hara, which celebrated the values of kindness and gratitude, recognised by the Grammys was important in telling the story of his ancestors, said Castillo, 31. The Garifuna, descendants of enslaved Africans and Indigenous Kalinagos, are indigenous to the Caribbean island of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), but their diaspora has spread across the Americas.
“It was only the first round of the Grammies, but it meant a lot to me, because I’m the first Garifuna artist to achieve this; it was like a dream coming true,” he said.
He added: “I remember when I sent the request to the Latin Grammy. I was a little nervous about it because I was the first one to cross that line … I was not expecting anything to come from it. So when they answered me and they told me to send my biography, it was like, wow.”
The Garifuna came into the spotlight in March when SVG’s prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, purchased Baliceaux, a private, uninhabited island in the country’s archipelago where thousands of Garifuna perished after they were stranded there by the British in 1796 in miserable conditions.
Regarded as sacred by the Garifuna, the SVG government announced plans to designate Baliceaux a heritage site for Garifuna who still live in Honduras, Belize and the other regions to which their ancestors were exiled by the British, centuries ago.
Castillo’s recent release Ítarala – “Amen” – isrooted in a traditional Garifuna hymn that explores humanity’s spiritual connection to its supreme creator. He wants his music to revive Garifuna music and language, which have been recognised by Unesco on its register of intangible cultural heritage.
Castillo said he remembers his grandmother singing the hymn to him. “My mum used to work, so I used to spend more time with my grandmother. She was 100% Garifuna, and she taught me about respect and about the culture.”
He added that since the age of 13, he had felt compelled by his ancestors to be a voice for the Garifuna people. “They need someone to talk about the history of the things that are happening in the community today; to remind us that we are warriors, survivors, and that to deal with today’s challenges, we need to act together like our ancestors did.”
Castillo said he persevered with his music, even when his parents disapproved, concerned that it was not a lucrative career option. “I’m the first in my family to start doing music and making art. So it was a little bit complicated for me. For them, they saw my dreams as something to do just for a couple of years, not for my whole life. They didn’t realise I could get something, or make a living from this.”
Castillo credits his manager, Miguel Álvarez, who is also Garifuna, for keeping him focused and avoiding trouble on the streets of Honduras.
Princess Eulogia Gordon, a Californian publicist who strongly identifies with her Garifuna heritage, compared Tavo Man to other greats of Caribbean music.
“I remember growing up in the US and hearing Bob Marley on the radio, and then people coming out with Carib Beats and Afro Beats. We had Beenie Man and Sean Paul, and Rihanna, and I was saying, ‘Oh my gosh, we are getting more and more of our flavours coming to the mainstream.’
“But, none of the Garifuna late greats like Paul Nabor, Andy Palacio and Aurelio Martínez were on the radio, and here we are in 2025 and they are still not getting that respect and that access to the mainstream,” she said.
Gordon said she felt an instant connection to Man’s rendition of Ítarala. “I feel like it was divinely and spiritually brought to me so I could work with it, and ensure that it gets pushed out into the community and beyond. The ancient story of the Garifuna is woven into this music, but there is also a contemporary rhythm that engages children and young people who have lost the desire to be Garifuna. This song gives us permission to be Garifuna.”
Kensington Palace makes delightful announcement about Kate Middleton
Princess Kate delighted fans as she broke the cover after a health break, visiting patients at a cancer well-being centre at Colchester Hospital.
The Princess of Wales spoke with patients and staff on a visit to the The Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) wellbeing garden at the hospital.
The future Queen’s visit coincides with the donation of 50 Catherine’s Rose plants, named after the princess by the RHS with funds from sales going to the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.
Kensington Palace confirmed by sharing adorable pictures of Prince Catherine and the beautiful rose, announcing: “Celebrating the healing power of nature at the RHS Wellbeing Garden at Colchester Hospital. Wonderful to see Catherine’s Rose planted here. 50 have been donated to support staff and patients, and bring moments of peace.
RHS bestowed the name Catherine’s Rose on the flower to raise awareness of the role that spending time outdoors plays in supporting people’s mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing.
RHS director general Clare Matterson said: “As well as supporting the incredible work of The Royal Marsden, Catherine’s Rose will raise awareness of how nature and gardening can help to heal.
“We know how important this message is as every day we see how accessing nature and being outside is vital for our health and happiness.
“Crucially too, Harkness Roses has done a wonderful job breeding this spectacular rose that is going to bring so much joy to all our nation’s gardeners and keep our precious pollinators buzzing too. It’s a really special rose.”
Catherine, who revealed she had been diagnosed with cancer in March last year, underwent a course of preventative chemotherapy and announced in September that she had completed her treatment.
She made a surprise visit in January to the Royal Marsden Hospital where she was treated and revealed she was in remission. The floribunda rose, bred by Harkness Roses, has coral-pink blooms with a scent of Turkish Delight and mango.
The RHS said its flowers will attract pollinators and will thrive in a mixed border, as a hedge, in a large container or in a rose bed.
Kate Middleton also promised to helping to plant roses in a garden designed to help visitors find peace.
Revealing the bitter truth about her cancer journey, Princess Catherine said treatment is ‘very scary, very daunting experience.’
She also spoke of the pressure of putting on a ‘brave face’ through cancer treatment and recovery, where ‘everybody expects you to be better – go! But that’s not the case at all’.
The Princess, who is continuing her return to public life while in remission from cancer, said it was the ‘very scary, very daunting experience.’
She admitted that “it did not end with the conclusion of treatment, with patients needing to take time to find their ‘new normal.
The Princess is gradually returning to work after shockingly cancelling an appearance at Royal Ascot.
Maurice Gee, who has died aged 93, was one of New Zealand’s most respected writers. For over 50 years, in more than 30 novels and stories, Gee mapped what he saw as the violent and sordid character of New Zealand society in psychologically complex narratives marked by unsatisfactory relationships and the rigid expectations of a conformist era.
His narratives about New Zealand’s darker side tell of frustrated sexual desires, unhappy families and redemptive love. These values coincide in his best loved novel, Plumb (1978), about a Presbyterian turned Unitarian minister (based on Gee’s grandfather, the controversial James Chapple), whose integrity and concern for public wellbeing come at the expense of those nearest to him.
They are played out in later novels: the social injustice underlying Live Bodies (1998), about an anti-fascist Austrian man interred during the second world war on Somes Island in Wellington harbour; fractured family or community relations in The Burning Boy (1994) and Blindsight (2005); criminality and violent impulses motivating the small town characters of Crime Story (1994; filmed as Fracture, 2004).
Gee began by mining the seam of secular puritanism and its ethic of sexual denial, hard work and utilitarianism that shaped early settler society. His first novel, The Big Season (1962), struck a nerve in questioning the social ethos associated with rugby, the nation’s sporting obsession.
Written at a time when sport was considered de rigueur, for fiction it ploughed a rich furrow. His second, a crime mystery, In My Father’s Den (1972; filmed in 2004) drew on the legacy of puritanism in the ambiguous attitudes of its protagonist, a social outsider, while Games of Choice (1978), about an unhappy family, introduced what became a familiar trope, a cultural alien, in this case a German family.
Although Gee’s frontal assault on conventional morality, through stories of violence and repression, was controversial, his craftmanship commanded admiration and acceptance.
In the middle years of the 1980s and 90s came what has been regarded as one of New Zealand’s greatest fictional achievements: the Plumb trilogy of novels, spanning three generations: Plumb, Meg (1981) and Sole Survivor (1983).
Like his contemporaries Maurice Shadbolt and CK Stead, Gee continued to expand the reach of realist fiction, through greater historical coverage, social range and psychological exploration, in novels such as Prowlers (1987), about an anti-German riot during the first world war, and Going West (1992), which explores the personalities of two characters – one creative, one scholarly – who may be seen as the two halves of Gee himself. Sympathetic portraits of women appear in the protagonists of Meg, and of Ellie and the Shadow Man (2001), about a woman who eventually discovers herself as an artist.
During these decades, Gee turned to writing for children and young adults, showing a rare ability to move between different readerships without privileging one over the other. He translated his preoccupation with oppressive and totalitarian regimes into fantasy and science fiction in ways comparable to New Zealand’s most acclaimed children’s writer, Margaret Mahy.
His first, Under the Mountain (1979), inspired by Auckland’s many volcanoes, about a world overcome by slug-like aliens and saved by children, was made into both a TV miniseries (1981) and film (2009), while his science fiction O trilogy, consisting of Halfmen of O (1982), The Priests of Ferris (1984), and Motherstone (1985), has been celebrated as an adventurous and accomplished work.
A dystopian trilogy, Salt (2007), Gool (2008) and The Limping Man (2010) was praised for its sharp, unsparing depictions. Gee wrote historic fiction for children including The Fat Man (1994), Hostel Girl (1999) and The Fire-Raiser (1986). His last fiction was Severed Land (2017), the quest of a girl who escapes slavery and an avenging drummer boy. In 2018 he published a memoir in three parts, Memory Pieces.
Gee made New Zealand small towns and suburbia his territory for fictional excavations of dysfunction, violence and cruelty: Wadestown and Karori (suburbs of Wellington), Henderson, Napier and Nelson, all places where he lived. He was born in Whakatāne, North Island: his father, Leonard Gee, was a carpenter and boxer, his mother, Lyndahl (nee Chapple), a socialist and accomplished storyteller.
Maurice grew up in Henderson in West Auckland, was educated at Henderson primary school, Avondale college and the University of Auckland, where he took a master’s degree in English (1954).
After gaining certification from Auckland Teachers’ College (1954), he taught for a decade while publishing short stories (his key collection was A Glorious Morning, Comrade, 1975). Then, having trained at the New Zealand Library School, he worked as a librarian from 1966 onwards, becoming a full-time writer in 1978.
Gee received New Zealand’s highest honours for literature: the Icon award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand in 2003 and the prime minister’s award for literary achievement in 2004. His adult fiction and writing for children and young adults were recognised in nearly equal measure in numerous prizes, while the award of the UK’s James Tait Black memorial prize for Plumb in 1978 confirmed early on his international reach.
Assessing Gee’s work in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, Nelson Wattie comments: “There is always an awareness of living at the edge of an abyss: one false move and we shall leave this abundance for nothingness.” This implies that his narratives of turmoil might also include New Zealand’s precarious sense of being a nation at the end of the world, afflicted by geographical distance and remoteness. Certainly they point to a problematic occupation.
Yet, although written on the cusp of an era in which New Zealand/Aotearoa has become increasingly immersed in a Maori/Pasifika world view, they are more than stories about his times: Gee’s vision of New Zealanders goes beyond history, geography and politics to apprehend universal concerns about human vulnerability, social stability, danger and salvation.
He is survived by his wife, Margareta Garden, whom he married in 1970, their daughters Emily and Abigail, and his son, Nigel, from an earlier relationship.
Charlize Theron opens up about freedom of being single mom
Charlize Theron is opening up about the experience of being a single mom.
Charlize joined Alex Cooper on the Wednesday, July 2 episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast to promote her film The Old Guard 2.
The actress discussed being a single mom to her daughters, August, 9, and Jackson, 12, and dubbed it “one of the healthiest decisions I ever made.”
“With women, it’s always like, something must be wrong with her. She can’t keep a man, and it’s never part of the discussion of like, ‘Wow. She’s really living her truth,’ ” The Italian Job actress shared.
She added, “I look at them and just be like, ‘Do you know how f—— great it is to live exactly how I want to live, to experience motherhood exactly how I wanted to experience it?’”
“I know the next thing they say is like, ‘Well, that’s not fair on your kids.’ Can I tell you something? That will be their story to tell,” the 49-year-old continued.
Charlize noted that her kids may have an opinion on being raised by a single parent, but also that she loves not having to share them with someone.
“I can only tell you that this is the best way that I know how to be a mother to them, and maybe they’ll grow up and tell their story, and I will respect that,” she noted.
“I just know that this was the only way that I knew I could do it, and my f—— god do I love every single day of it. I love that I don’t have to share them with somebody,” she confessed.
“I love that I don’t have to run every f—— thing by a guy. I don’t. I love that I don’t well, oh my god. Co-parent. I like I f—— love that I don’t have to do any of that stuff,” she added.
“I broke the cycle,” she declared.
Charlize Theron became a mother in 2012 when she adopted Jackson. She welcomed her younger daughter, August, through adoption in 2015.
Sony Music France and Sony Music Publishing France have acquired Lusafrica and Africa Nostra, a long-established label and publishing house dedicated to promoting Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) and African artists around the world.
Founded in 1988 by José Da Silva, Lusafrica introduced Cesária Évora to the world. The singer secured numerous awards for her music including a Grammy, four Kora Awards, and two Victoires de la Musique.
After producing Cesária Évora and other Cape Verdean Lusophone artists such as Lura, Lusafrica diversified by signing African artists including Bonga and Boubacar Traoré, and Latin American artists such as Polo Montañez.
Montañez gained international recognition with his hit Un Montón de Estrellas, which earned him a nomination for a Latin Grammy award in 2003. The track enjoyed widespread radio airplay in Cuba and was later covered by international artists.
In 2000, the publishing house Africa Nostra was established, developing a catalogue that overlaps with nearly three-quarters of Lusafrica’s collection.
The catalogue is made up of more than 4,000 titles including the entire discography of Cesária Évora, featuring international hits such as Petit Pays, Sodade and Bésame Mucho. It also includes all albums of Polo Montañez including Un Montón de Estrellas and Guitarra Mía.
“Lusafrica and Africa Nostra hold a central position in the spread of Lusophone and African music worldwide,” said a statement.
“Lusafrica and Africa Nostra’s catalogue resonate far beyond the borders of its artists, with particularly strong listening audiences in the United States, France and Latin America and has been steadily growing for years. Their acquisition by Sony Music France and Sony Music Publishing France opens new opportunities to expand their reach and resonance with fans in new markets.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Lusafrica into our Sony Music family,” said Marie-Anne Robert, managing director of Sony Music France. “We are committed to preserving and developing the legacy built by Lusafrica, by establishing bridges between markets and generations, for the benefit of artists and fans. Our expertise in developing international audiences will allow listeners worldwide to discover or rediscover this essential world music catalogue. We will continue to honor José Da Silva’s vision and support the artists in reaching new heights.”
Our expertise in developing international audiences will allow listeners worldwide to discover or rediscover this essential world music catalogue
Marie-Anne Robert
“Almost 40 years after the creation of Lusafrica, I decided to hand over our label to Sony Music France, a long-standing partner with whom we share a strong history,” said José Da Silva, founder of Lusafrica. “It wasn’t an easy choice, but it was an obvious one. Over time, I felt that I no longer had the energy to support Lusafrica as I would have liked. However, I’m convinced that it was the best decision: Sony Music France and Sony Music Publishing have the resources and know-how to continue this adventure, and above all, they know our catalogue and our musical identity thanks to over 20 years of collaboration.
“Since it was founded in 1988, Lusafrica has played a key role in spreading African, Latin and Portuguese music around the world, not least through the incredible career of Cesária Évora. Today’s handover marks the end of a cycle, but also the continuity of a musical heritage that is close to my heart.”
“We are extremely enthusiastic about working with Africa Nostra’s repertoire,” said Antoine Dathanat, managing director of Sony Music Publishing France. “Its editorial catalogue is rich and diverse, featuring iconic titles with an international footprint. These works hold tremendous potential for covers and reinterpretations, especially among the younger generation. By integrating Africa Nostra, we enhance our ability to bring these musical treasures to an international audience eager to discover or rediscover timeless classics.”
PHOTO: (L-R) Elodie Da Silva, CEO Lusafrica & Africa Nostra, Matthieu Damade, Catalogue Manager Sony Music France, José Da Silva, founder Lusafrica & Africa Nostra, Marie-Anne Robert, Managing Director Sony Music France, Georges Ouaggini, Finance Director Sony Music France, Antoine Dathanat, Managing Director Sony Music Publishing France (credit: Jules Despretz)
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One might think that working at a guidebook company would exhaust our staff from reading when we’re off the clock, but au contraire. We’re constantly reaching for our next great reads, both on and off the road, not only to get lost in fascinating stories but also to visit incredible places with no plane ticket required.
Here are the books our staff are reading on the road this summer, and the travel-worthy destinations they’re set in.
The 12th arrondissement of Paris. Kate Devine for Lonely Planet
Citizens by Simon Schama
Set in: France
An in-depth history of the French Revolution – a lovely, long read for sitting out in the sun.
– Amy Lynch, Destination Editor for the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia
Buildings around Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires. Brester Irina/Shutterstock
Nueva correspondencia (1955-1972) by Alejandra Pizarnik
Set in: Buenos Aires, Paris and New York City
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I bought this for the beautiful cover, and also because I’m trying to brush up on my Spanish this summer. I also love books of letters — it’s so close to being inside someone’s brain and so close to their emotions. It’s also a voyeuristic read. Pizarnik lived between Argentina and Paris, which is great travel inspiration for me as well.
– Pia Peterson Haggarty, Photo Director
The Getty Center in Los Angeles. Jon Bilous/Shutterstock
Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz
Set in: Los Angeles
My tried-and-true summer read. This book oozes sweltering, dreamy summer vibes. It has everything you could ever want: glimmering 1960s LA, unrequited love, glamorous parties, surfing on crashing West Coast waves and chaotic dinner parties where everyone is in a miniskirt and has sandy hair. Babitz’s prose is hilarious, heartfelt and captivating. I reread this novel nearly every summer, and it never disappoints.
– Chamidae Ford, Digital Editor
The US Open at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York City. Leonard Zhukovsky/Shutterstock
The Racket by Conor Niland
Set in: Ireland, and Grand Slam tournaments across the globe
An inside look at the lives of pro tennis players who aren’t part of the 1%. Few people travel as much as tennis players, but it’s hardly glamorous for anyone not named Roger or Serena. I’m an avid tennis fan, and reading about what most players sacrifice just to have a shot at being a tennis pro is an eye-opener.
– James Pham, Destination Editor for Southeast Asia
A lakeside cottage in Ontario. LesPalenik/Shutterstock
One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
Set in: Ontario’s countryside
In the fourth book by this Canadian author, Fortune shows she understands exactly what makes for the perfect beach read: exclusively summer settings (think: Ontario’s cottage country); deeply relatable female protagonists; a plot that’s light enough to keep you turning pages without feeling like you’re eating junk food; and just the right amount of spice.
– Jessica Lockhart, Destination Editor for Oceania
The easternmost point of New Zealand on Te Araroa. maphke/Shutterstock
Northbound: Four seasons of solitude on Te Araroa by Naomi Arnold
Set in: New Zealand
Last year, Arnold walked the entirety of Te Araroa – a 3000km (1850-mile) trail that spans the length of New Zealand – taking notes along the way that would eventually become this book. If Arnold’s book makes you want to hike across NZ but you don’t have months to spare, she’s also shared some of her favorite day hikes with us in Lonely Planet’s forthcoming Best Day Hikes New Zealand, which will be published in September 2025.
– Jessica Lockhart, Destination Editor for Oceania
A cottage in England’s Chiltern hills. Pawel Piotr/Shutterstock
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Set in: England’s countryside
A woman in early 20th-century England moves to the countryside from London after buying a guidebook to the Chilterns at her florist’s. She eventually becomes a little bit witchy and finds her familiar in a cat named Vinegar. (And you know how LP’s resident cat lady feels about books with cat characters!)
– Akanksha Singh, Destination Editor for Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent
Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia. ciapix/Shutterstock
Can’t Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan
Set in:Atlanta
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The final book in the Skyland series (which follows three friends in Atlanta navigating life in their 40s) is a little spicy. Kennedy creates a world and characters that are not free of hardships but filled with love and support to tackle them.
– Alicia Johnson, Destination Editor for South America and the Caribbean
Cafe de L’ambre in Tokyo. Rintaro Kanemoto for Lonely Planet
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Set in:Tokyo
The chapters in this book about a time-traveling cafe are each dedicated to a different patron’s journey. The premise is kooky enough to be fun, but the short chapters have surprising emotional depth.
– Selena Takigawa Hoy, Destination Editor for Northeast Asia
Grotta della Poesia (Cave of Poetry) on the coast of Puglia, Italy. LauraVl/Shutterstock
Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino
Set in:Italy
Always charming, often funny and occasionally heartbreaking tales about love and the illusion of love. The characters are wacky yet real, from two strangers on a beach (beach crush is the new airport crush) to a couple seeking compromise over an unsolvable ant infestation. It’s set in multiple destinations in Italy and some others across Europe. Most of the tales are brief, perfect for squeezing in between vacation activities – or in my case, on subway commutes.
– Ann Douglas Lott, Digital Editor
View of Kaminarimon (Thunder Gate) from inside Sensō-ji in Tokyo. Rintaro Kanemoto for Lonely Planet
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
Set in: Tokyo
It’s about a Tokyo-based journalist who starts to interview Manako Kajii, a woman convicted of being a serial killer who has been accused of seducing her victims with her cooking. The book is inspired by a real-life serial murder case in Japan. It explores various themes, like identity, body image, loneliness, gender stereotypes, sexism and misogyny.
– Zara Sekhavati, Destination Editor for the Middle East & Africa
Ocean Vuong’s latest novel takes place in a fictional small New England town. Pictured here, real-life New England town Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Brester Irina/Shutterstock
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Set in: New England
I’m a big fan of novelist Ocean Vuong, so I had to read his latest book about life in a small Connecticut town where an unlikely friendship forms between an elderly widow with dementia and a young suicidal man.
– Matt Paco, Senior Producer
The main square in Malfa, Sicily. Adrienne Pitts for Lonely Planet
Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante
Set in: Sicily
It’s an Italian family saga that made Natalia Ginzburg (one of my favorite authors) declare Morante “the greatest writer of the century” after reading it in one sitting, and it also inspired My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, so I can’t wait to get stuck in it. At over 800 pages, it’ll keep me occupied during more than one sitting at the beach; I’ll be lost in it for days! The book follows three generations of Sicilian women through bad marriages and family secrets, all narrated by a reclusive woman spinning what she calls her own “outlandish epic.” It was first published in 1948, but we’re only getting the full English translation now.
– Sasha Brady, Digital Editor
The Bluff on Isle of Hope, Savannah, GA. Ethan Payne for Lonely Planet
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
Set in: Coastal Georgia
By the queen of solid, literary-esque beach reads (Happy Place is my favorite book), Great Big Beautiful Life follows two writers on a fictional island off the coast of Georgia who are competing to tell the story of a woman with a secret. Perfect mix of love and mystery. It’s hard to go wrong with Emily Henry, even if contemporary romance isn’t your typical genre.
– Rachel Lewis, Senior Social Media Manager
Downtown Chicago. Brester Irina/Shutterstock
My Roommate Is a Vampire by Jenna Levine
Set in:Chicago
As a Twilight girlie, this one grabbed me immediately: a struggling artist in modern-day Chicago moves into an apartment only to find out her new roommate is a sexy vampire. It’s the perfect sort of book for flying through a long flight or car ride. Not exactly seasonally appropriate, but very, very fun. And hot. So there’s that.
– Rachel Lewis, Senior Social Media Manager
Professional tennis player Coco Gauff at the French Open. Leonard Zhukovsky/Shutterstock
Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Set in: multiple locations, including Grand Slam tournaments
The second tennis-related book on this list, this one’s historical fiction about a pro tennis player who comes out of retirement to defend her Grand Slam record.
– Melissa Yeager, Destination Editor for Western USA and Canada
Brownstones in Brooklyn Heights. Jon Bilous/Shutterstock
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xóchitl González
Set in: New York City
Fun, sharp, witty, smart. I couldn’t put it down. Set between New York and Puerto Rico, two successful Brooklyn-based siblings navigate the distinctions between material success and personal happiness in their adult lives. A lively tale about the search for authentic identity while confronting the truths about the people and places that raised you. Plus, the book jacket is bright and colorful and looks like cool art.
– Nitya Chambers, Senior VP of Digital Content
Mt Rainier looms over the town of Gig Harbor, Washington. GSD Photography/Shutterstock
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Set in: Washington’s Puget Sound
This is a tender story about the unlikely friendship of a woman and an octopus in a fictional town in Puget Sound. It’s way deeper than you would anticipate with this description.
– Melissa Yeager, Destination Editor for Western USA and Canada
Montjuic Castle is an old military fortress built on top of Montjuic hill in Barcelona, Spain. ColorMaker/Shutterstock
Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
Set in: A fictional land with various kingdoms and castles
A high fantasy series that follows a teenage assassin seeking her freedom in a corrupt kingdom. Because there’s something about dipping into a little escapism while you’re en route to/in the middle of/returning from your latest IRL escape.
– Shalayne Pulia, Social Contributor Manager
Diners outside Jeffrey’s Grocery restaurant and bar in New York City. Ann Douglas Lott/Lonely Planet
Care and Feeding by Laurie Woolever
Set in: New York City
Woolever is a food writer who worked with Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali. In this memoir, she writes about restaurants, chefs and life in NYC. It’s absolutely delicious.
– Caroline Trefler, Destination Editor for Eastern US and Canada
The 2010s brought with it the absolute domination of IP and franchises over all else, but the studios still yearn for the days when one name could get millions of people to the cinema without a second thought.
The arrival of the last Mission: Impossible movie, Final Reckoning, brought with it yet another round of discourse over whether or not Tom Cruise was The Last Movie Star.
Who were the undisputed A-List icons who could follow in his footsteps and headline blockbusters that would delight audiences and accrue immense profits? Who could replace the genre’s most iconic face and performer of terrifying stunts?
Certainly, many have tried to replicate the magic over the past 15 or so years (most of them tall hunky white guys named Chris). Glen Powell is eager to claim the crown. Cruise himself put forward Sinners star Michael B. Jordan as a contender. The true heir, however, has been proving herself as such for most of her life and has the box office receipts to prove it.
Now headlining the latest Jurassic World movie, Rebirth, Scarlett Johansson is here to remind us that she is a true movie star.
The multi-award-winning actress has been in the business since she was a child, earning raves in films like The Horse Whisperer and Ghost World, before graduating to worldwide acclaim before she was even old enough to drink.
For close to two decades now, she’s modelled herself into both a critic’s favorite and a money-making powerhouse. She’s the second highest-grossing leading actor of all-time and the highest-grossing woman, well ahead of Cruise as well as Bradley Cooper and Chrises Evans, Pratt, and Hemsworth. Even accounting for all roles, she’s comfortably in the top ten with well over $15.4 billion to her name. Add to that two Oscar nominations, a Tony, an honorary César, seven stints hosting Saturday Night Live, and a Time Magazine honor as one of the most influential people in the world. Ethan Hunt who?
In terms of pure savviness, Johansson is second to none. She has a sharp eye for projects and a distinct lack of snobbery. Yes, she’s got those prestige indie titles, like her work with Wes Anderson, but she’s also happy to do kids movies like Sing or Transformers One. She does comedies (Rough Night), rom-coms (Fly Me To the Moon), biopics (Hitchcock), period pieces (Hail, Caesar!)… oh, and there’s also the highest-grossing film franchise of all time.
Giphy
Being Black Widow, one of the first generation Avengers, has certainly helped to keep her in the public eye over the years. She came to the franchise already a star and one could argue that she didn’t need the Marvel boost since she had a highly enviable filmography that included works with Sofia Coppola, Michael Bay, and SpongeBob SquarePants. But the MCU put her front and center as an action star and one of the few women in such a position at that time.
As Natasha Romanoff, she was the girl with a gun in the boys club that featured robot suits, genetic engineering, and literal gods. She outsmarted Loki, maced goons, and provided a much-needed emotional grounding amid the gymnastics and explosions. It’s a testament to Johansson’s commitment to the character that she was able to rise above some of the more sexist writing she was saddled with (hello, Avengers: Age of Ultron and that Hulk boob fall scene.)
A lot of MCU actors seemed to struggle to find ways to use their new star power, but Johansson, by that point a veteran of film, made fascinating choices.
2014’s Lucy, directed by Luc Besson, proved that she could headline an action movie without a superhero name in the title (a pointed move from her given that Marvel took way too long to greenlight a Black Widow due to CEO sexism.) Marriage Story gave her one of her greatest roles as a woman dealing with the traumatic fallout of a divorce. In Under the Skin, she disguised herself to drive around Glasgow in a white van and pick up strangers for this unnerving sci-fi that deliberately played around with Johansson’s image as a sex symbol.
A still from ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ / Universal Pictures and Amblin En / Universal Pictures
Not every movie was a major hit or even a wise decision, as the total red flag that was the Ghost in the Shell adaptation proves, but the strategy behind each choice is evident. It’s about building a sturdy foundation of stardom with four quadrant appeal: be a financial hit, win awards, be known to people of all ages, and have the power to do whatever the hell you want. She’s putting her range to good use, not being constricted by the narrow boundaries of the A-List. ScarJo could and would do Top Gun: Maverick, but Tom Cruise couldn’t do Under the Skin.
But box office and reviews only tell half the story when it comes to Hollywood power. What is a greater sign of your strength and nerve than suing the hell out of Disney?
Johansson took on the House of Mouse, alleging breach of contract over their decision to release Black Widow simultaneously in cinemas and on Disney+. The case was settled and Johansson reportedly walked away with $40 million. She could have risked killing her lucrative relationship with the corporate giant by doing this, but she came out of it stronger, with plans to keep working with Disney (including a Tower of Terror movie.)
She also called out Sam Altman of OpenAI when he launched a chat bot with a voice that was undeniably intended to invoke comparisons with Johansson’s. This came after she declined the company’s offer to formally work with them on the project, taking inspiration from her role in Spike Jonze’s AI romance Her. It was symbolic of a major problem Johansson’s faced throughout her career: leering sexism and objectification.
A still from ‘Marriage Story’ / Netflix
A still from ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ / Jay Maidment/Marvel
A still from ‘Lucy’ / Universal Pictures
In a 2022 interview with the Armchair Expert podcast, she talked about how she was “kind of pigeonholed into this weird hypersexualized thing” for much of her career. It’s not tough to find interviews or profiles where people talk about her as if she’s a piece of meat. In one infamous red carpet interview, she was groped. Even as she became one of the biggest stars on the planet, a tech bro felt entitled to steal her voice. But Johansson didn’t take that insult lying down. She worked too hard for that, and Altman paused the project.
Jurassic World Rebirth will surely make all of the money and keep Johansson’s star power sturdy. Up next, she will wield her clout in a whole new way by releasing her directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, which premiered at Cannes and has already been cued up for an Oscar campaign for its lead actress, June Squibb.
Johansson shared with The Hollywood Reporter that her dream co-star was Tom Cruise, and Cruise in return told Entertainment Tonight that he would love to work with her. What better way to truly pass the gauntlet than with a ScarJo-Cruise team-up?
As a kid, I would see a new casino every time I visited Vegas with my family. They were huge, multimillion dollar investments and even then, I knew that money had come from people losing it in machines. That’s probably why I don’t gamble. My dad only actually took us into a casino a couple of times, but I remember him believing he would win and my mother being more rational about it.
Thinking about it now, it’s absurd to take your kids to Vegas. My friend Rich remembers his parents checking him and his brother in at the Circus Circus hotel and casino – I think there was maybe a trampoline for children to jump on while the parents gambled. Afterwards, they’d hand in their ticket and pick the kids up again, like you do with your coat at the theatre.
In my 20s, I’d go to Vegas with friends and, while they were gambling, I’d be documenting, running around and taking photos wherever I could. I began to realise that the gap between the absurd commercials we have in the US for casinos that promise the world, and the reality that I was seeing, was huge, almost to a comical degree. The photographs I’d been accumulating started to form a cohesive body of work, showing the contrast between the glamour in the marketing, and the actuality – which is more like going to the airport than a big night out in Monte Carlo.
I took trips to places well known for their casinos, such as Reno, Nevada and Atlantic City, and whenever I was somewhere in the US that had one, I would seek it out. I tend to use a hit and run approach when photographing inside them. If I see security looking at me, or if other people are becoming aware of me, I’ll just move on – there’s always an embarrassment of riches to photograph, you could just go to the next table, or even the next casino. I also don’t want to be perceived as someone who might be helping someone cheat, so I try to avoid any card games.
I feel like I’m setting the stage for a story, and then you let your mind fill in the blanks. This photograph of an Elvis impersonator is an example of that – one image that says 1,000 words. It’s pretty much the iconic image of my Casinoland book. Elvis was the king but there was a darker side to him too, which reflects the difference between the marketing of casinos and their reality.
The photograph was taken in 2012 and it epitomises Vegas – not just because of Elvis, but also the lights and the colour. For some reason I feel more emotion when there’s more saturation in an image. There’s so much distraction going on here, but it all frames the king in the centre. He’s kind of slumped back at the slot machine: you see him from the back but you know exactly who he is.
Often players go into a particular mental state at the slot machines, where they seem to be aware of nothing else. They get locked into a zone where it’s just them and the machine. I could often get pretty close, and was able to capture what was happening without them seeing me. You have to be careful though – people have come at me a couple of times. On one occasion, when I was still shooting on film, the sound of my Olympus woke a guy I’d just photographed slumped across a machine, and he really wanted to fight me. There was no reasoning with him. I managed to dodge into a club and amazingly the velvet rope kept him at bay – he wouldn’t cross it.
Nowadays I carry a small Fuji, but phone cameras have got good enough for me to use for stealth work. If I pick up my Nikon with its longer lens, it’s like I’m about to point a gun at someone. In the age of social media, people are much more suspicious of a photographer’s motives than they used to be, but I am a positive person and want the best for everybody. Someone described my work as documenting the fall of an empire in the deserts of Nevada, but I’m doing it with a sense of humour and a light touch.
Born: Ohio, 1969 Trained: “Studied art history at the University of San Diego, spent many hours at the Museum of Photographic Arts bookstore in Balboa Park, and regularly snuck into film classes. I fell in love with photography while studying in Florence, Italy, in my second year of college and have been pretty much self-taught since then by looking at paintings in museums and watching great films. Influences: “Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, Helen Levitt, Bill Owens, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Hunter S Thompson.” High point: “As a Pollyanna optimist, I have to believe my high point has yet to happen – but having Edward Snowden share an image I created with The Yes Men stands out.” Low point: “To survive as an artist you have to accept a barrage of rejection and move on.” Top tip: “Chuck Close noted that photography is one of the easiest art forms to learn but the hardest to find your voice. I recommend learning as much craft as you can, but at some point you have to look deep inside yourself to carve your path.”
Bruno Lacombe, in his youth an ally of the 1960s revolutionary intellectual Guy Debord, is now self-exiled to a cave complex in the limestone regions of southern France. The caves are like a kind of political rhetoric in themselves, a message convoluted and endless. Their vanished inhabitants obsess him. Since the Neanderthal extinction, “the wedge between human beings and nature” has become “far deeper than the wedge between factory owners and factory workers that created the conditions of twentieth century life”. The left, he believes, needs to properly understand this.
Meanwhile, shadowy French authorities have decided that Lacombe and the “Moulinards” – the post-Debordian eco-commune he mentors by email – need to be steered out of their less than utopian rural domesticity and towards some act of serious terrorism, so they can be dealt with. So they hire Sadie Smith, a freelance American spy-cop, to infiltrate and provoke an outrage. The situation Sadie finds on the ground is confused and intersectional, centred on a real-life green issue: the diversion of local water supplies into vast “mega-basins” to support corporate agribusiness projects at the expense of the local farmers and the environment. Actors within and without the Moulinard commune, less in bad or good faith than in something shifting constantly between the two, all have their motives for protest or intervention.
Sadie is a triumph of character – not quite fully self-deceived, not even entirely corrupted by the barely controlled confusions, emotional complications and near-disasters of the deep-cover agent’s life. She’s a satire, but she’s also being straight with us. She’s not quite a sensationist, although the world pours in on her senses, and through hers into ours. How, Rachel Kushner asks in this Booker-shortlisted novel, does the individual’s embrace of experience interface with the ideological? In what circumstances can ideology even permit an interface? Sadie Smith is perhaps both question and answer.
M John Harrison
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Psychology
The truth about teenagers
Coming of Age
Lucy Foulkes
Coming of Age Lucy Foulkes
The truth about teenagers
What does your reminiscence bump look like? If this sounds like a blow to the head with a touch of amnesia, it isn’t – but it might be just as painful. No, as Lucy Foulkes explains in her eye-opening guide to the psychology of adolescence, it’s the period of life during which people report the greatest number of important autobiographical memories. For most of us it starts around 10 and peaks at 20, taking in a plethora of firsts: first kiss, first love, first time drinking alcohol or taking drugs, first time away from home. Not to mention exams, bullying, breakups and bereavement. Thinking about it, maybe a concussion would be preferable. But then, as this book shows, it’s these enduringly vivid years that define the adults we become.
Foulkes, a research fellow in psychology at the University of Oxford, conducted 23 in-depth interviews for Coming of Age and they are by turns funny, hair-raising and desperately sad. Occasionally, like Naomi’s account of her first love, Peter, they have a sort of novelistic potency. In any case, the majority of readers will find someone they can identify with among her diverse cast of teenagers. Most are now in their 30s or older and are looking back wistfully, with regret, or with something like equanimity. Their accounts allow Foulkes to bring out her central point: that we narrate our lives into being, and that adolescence is so important partly because it is where this narration begins in earnest. The stories we tell ourselves shape who we are, and we can get stuck in these stories, or change them to our advantage.
Coming of Age ends movingly. Foulkes showed each of her subjects what she’d written to make sure they were happy with how they’d been portrayed. These were stories of joy, pain and loss that had reverberated through their lives. For many, seeing them presented as part of the broader story of adolescence prompted a re-evaluation. One said their “shoulders had finally dropped” after 20 years, another that they now felt ready to talk to others about what they had been through. Adolescence may be the first draft of personhood, but it doesn’t have to be the last, as this wise and revelatory book shows.
David Shariatmadari
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Geopolitics
Minute by minute account
Nuclear War
Annie Jacobsen
Nuclear War Annie Jacobsen
Minute by minute account
There is, as Jacobsen says, “no such thing as a small nuclear war”: it would mean the end of civilisation. In this powerful book, she describes in horrifying detail how it could happen today. The US has been preparing plans for a nuclear third world war since at least the 1950s, when the H-bomb was created. This was many times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, which killed at least 80,000 people instantly.
By 1960, the US war plan for a pre-emptive strike on the Soviet Union predicted 275 million people would die in the first hour, followed by 325 million more from radioactive fallout. A Soviet counterstrike would have killed 100 million Americans and a similar number from fallout. Someone who was privy to these top-secret plans likened them to the Nazis’ preparations for genocide.
Jacobsen’s deeply researched book consists of a minute-by-minute account of a frighteningly realistic scenario in which North Korea launches a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at the Pentagon in Washington. It is what the US and Russia feared most during the cold war. Each country devised meticulous protocols to ensure their massive arsenals could still be launched, even when their leaders had been killed. Jacobsen shows in chilling detail how these plans would be implemented, from the moment the launch of “the all-powerful, unstoppable, civilisation-threatening ICBM” is detected, to the president’s decision to hit North Korea with 82 nuclear warheads 20 minutes later. But as the US ICBMs have to overfly Russia to hit North Korea, the Russians mistakenly believe they are the target and launch their own missiles at America – a fatal miscalculation for the entire world.
A mere 32 minutes after launch, the North Korean missile hits Washington: “Never in the history of mankind have so many human beings been killed so fast.” Forty minutes later the Russian missiles begin hitting America in a barrage of “nuclear hellfire” that would lead to the deaths of more than 5 billion people. It would also cause a “nuclear little ice age”, destroying agriculture around the world for a decade.
Jacobsen rightly says that “the whole premise of using nuclear weapons is madness”. As gripping as any thriller, her book brilliantly portrays the horrific reality of nuclear war and the threat it continues to pose to the very survival of human life on our planet.
PD Smith
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Fiction
A well-mapped romance
You Are Here
David Nicholls
You Are Here David Nicholls
A well-mapped romance
Michael, 42, a bearded geography teacher from York, is walking 200 miles across Britain in order not to think about his recent divorce. His concerned friend Cleo gathers a small party to accompany him for the first few days, including her old friend Marnie, 38, a copy editor, also divorced, living in Herne Hill.
Backstories are gently woven: unremarkable childhoods, how their marriages fell apart, the arc of their careers. Then everyone else goes home, and we are left with Marnie, Michael, their growing sexual chemistry and Britain’s spectacular landscapes.
Nicholls’s novels often confound narrative expectations – most notably with the shock ending of One Day – but there are few surprises here. Short, pacy chapters are energised by a trail mix of jolly headings: in one section, playlist songs that Marnie and Michael share – “Don’t Speak by No Doubt (1996)”, “No Limit by 2 Unlimited (1992)”. Droll signposting aside, we are following the Jane Austen map of romantic plotting: two wounded but complementary souls, initial indifference, misdirected affections, growing attraction, misunderstandings, obstacles, hope and resolution.
There is satisfaction to be taken from this midlife redemption tale, not least because it fills a gap: Nicholls’s novels now cover love and marriage across every age bracket from teens to mid-50s. It may not be challenging – unlike Austen’s Persuasion, quoted in the epigraph, it offers neither visceral desperation nor pent-up agonies – but for many it will be a comforting antidote to the grimness of our grim world, a crowd-pleaser and, surely, a TV hit-to-be.
Lucy Atkins
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Letters
Let me be your fantasy
Want
Gillian Anderson
Want Gillian Anderson
Let me be your fantasy
Part of the pleasure of reading Want – a collection of 174 anonymous sexual fantasies submitted by women from around the world – is that the scenarios are often strikingly odd. One contributor dreams of being fed chocolate by the Hogwarts potion master. Another longs to have sex with her office door knob. Women are still seen as less sexual than men, but this book attests to a vivid imaginative hinterland, where the desires are far more inventive than the “Milf” and “cheerleader” tropes that dominate man-made porn. In one particularly detailed submission, a woman daydreams about breastfeeding an attractive cashier at the supermarket.
The fantasies in this book are sometimes shocking, but hard limits were imposed during the selection process to remove anything that, if acted out in real life, would be illegal. Want is edited by Gillian Anderson, who has restyled herself as a sort of sexual agony aunt after playing a charismatic therapist in Netflix’s Sex Education. In her introduction, Anderson explains how she struggled with the less straightforwardly empowering submissions. Some did make the final cut, but they are punctuated by anxious self-justification. One woman interrupts her fantasy about being held captive by a group of robbers to insist that she is “a feminist”, and that the imaginary robbers have her “consent”.
Some of the stories in this book feel too self-censored to be truly erotic. Even so, Want makes for addictive reading. More compelling than the fantasies themselves are the frequent glimpses into the women’s real worlds. One contributor confesses that she fantasises about her partner’s death – she longs to be free, because she has never explored her true feelings for women. Another writes that she brings herself to orgasm by thinking about her husband cheating on her. He has been unfaithful in reality, so every time she does this, she cries. The real-life loneliness conveyed here is much rawer than the wish-fulfilment. At its best, Want gives you privileged access into the most painful, truthful corners of these women’s lives.
Kitty Drake
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Fiction
A transcendent late gift
Rosarita
Anita Desai
Rosarita Anita Desai
A transcendent late gift
Anita Desai’s riddling and haunted new novel is set in motion when Bonita, a young Indian woman, meets a tricksy figure in a park in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. A student of Spanish, Bonita is leafing through local newspapers when she is approached. “The Stranger” – elderly, overfriendly and peculiarly dressed “in the flamboyant Mexican style that few Mexican women assume at any other than festive occasions” – claims to know Bonita’s dead mother, whom she calls “Rosarita”. She says they met and became friends when the latter came to pursue art under the tutelage of Mexican maestros. Bonita has no recollections of her mother painting or travelling to Mexico. She remembers, however, “a sketch in wishy-washy pale pastels that had hung on the wall above your bed at home, of a woman seated on a park bench – and yes, it could have been one here in San Miguel – with a child playing in the sand at her feet”. The woman “is not looking at the child and the child is not looking at her, as if they had no relation to each other, each absorbed in a separate world, and silent”.
Written in the second person, the novel interrogates the gulf that can exist between a parent and her child, and the sketch – forgotten and recalled – is a sly mise en abyme that also speaks to the fickleness of memory, and the ever-porous boundaries between the past and the present.
Desai has been writing for more than six decades now. Thrice shortlisted for the Booker prize, she is known for the effortless lyricism of her sentences, the deceptive simplicity of her stories, and her canny eye for detail. This is a novel of profound philosophical inquiry, pondering the enigmas of the mind and the self, the frontiers of fantasy and reality, and ultimately, whether one person can ever fully imagine and understand the life of another.
Yagnishsing Dawoor
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History
An insider’s take
An African History of Africa
Zeinab Badawi
An African History of Africa Zeinab Badawi
An insider’s take
There is no shortage of big tomes about Africa written by old Africa hands – those white journalists, memoirists, travel writers or novelists who know Africa better than Africans. This genre, lampooned by Binyavanga Wainaina’s satirical essay How to Write About Africa, weaves together stories that exalt the continent’s landscape but decry its politics, that revere its wildlife but patronise its people, that use words such as “timeless”, “primordial” and “tribal” when explaining Africa’s historical trajectories.
Zeinab Badawi’s An African History of Africa is a corrective to these narratives. Ambitious in scope and refreshing in perspective, the book stretches from the origins of Homo sapiens in east Africa through to the end of apartheid in South Africa. It is informed by interviews Badawi conducted with African scholars and cultural custodians, whose expertise, observations and wisdom are threaded through the book.
The very act of telling African history from an African perspective and making this history accessible to a wide audience is an assertion of dignity and an invitation to learn more. As Badawi puts it: “I hope I have demonstrated that Africa has a history, that it is a fundamental part of our global story, and one that is worthy of greater attention and respect than it has so far received.” She most certainly has.
Simukai Chigudu
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Biography
Friendship and rivalry in LA
Didion & Babitz
Lili Anolik
Didion & Babitz Lili Anolik
Friendship and rivalry in LA
Journalist Lili Anolik’s latest book is a “provocation”, a dual biography of the two friends who carved their initials on to the counterculture of 1960s and 1970s California. Joan Didion used her reporting skills to fashion herself into a serious-minded literary titan, while Eve Babitz’s novels and essay collections, compiled from the same social scenes but shaped more loosely and with greater spirit, fell into relative obscurity. That is, until Anolik tracked Babitz down in 2012, by then seriously ill and living in squalor. Anolik became obsessed, helping to restore Babitz’s reputation as a writer and chronicler of Los Angeles life, eventually writing the 2019 biography Hollywood’s Eve. “My preoccupation was unbalanced, fetishistic,” she admits here.
This time, Anolik uses Didion as the headliner, though seemingly through gritted teeth. When Babitz died, aged 78, in 2021 – just days before Didion, who was 87 – her sister Mirandi discovered boxes of papers in the back of a wardrobe. Anolik was reeled in by an excoriating but unsent letter from Babitz to Didion, which she chooses to interpret as a platonic “lovers’ quarrel”. Babitz assails her friend and occasional collaborator (Didion briefly edited Babitz’s first collection, before Babitz “fired” her) for what she perceives as Didion’s dislike of women, her contempt for art, and her deference to her husband. Anolik takes this wounded screed and runs with it, replaying Babitz’s story through its entanglements with Didion’s. This is vivid, entertaining stuff and often gallops along as if it’s been up all night at one of Didion and Dunne’s notorious Franklin Avenue gatherings, but it is, perhaps, more provocative than entirely convincing.
Rebecca Nicholson
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Essays
Portrait of the artists
The Position of Spoons
Deborah Levy
The Position of Spoons Deborah Levy
Portrait of the artists
“It is a writing adventure to go in deep, then deeper, and then to play with surface so that we become experts at surface and depth,” writes Deborah Levy, and it’s as good a statement of intent as any in this collection, which delves into topics both trivial and profound: brothel creepers, car crashes, lemon curd, trauma.
The theme, insofar as there is one, is the artists who have inspired her. Many of these are women, and Levy writes skilfully on the complex interplay of self-presentation and effacement that’s often demanded of female creativity. Lee Miller “both hides from and gives herself to the camera”; Francesca Woodman makes “herself present by making herself absent”. Artists and writers invent things, but they invent themselves too.
Levy is good on the prices we find ourselves paying: for art, for love, for fitting in. Of Ann Quin, the avant garde, working-class writer who drowned herself in the sea off Brighton, she says: “I want to know more about what it took to want to swim home and I know Quin could have told me.” In another short piece called Values and Standards, she writes about an acquaintance she sometimes meets at the school gates. This woman’s husband takes pleasure in humiliating her; to survive, “she had removed her own eyes and saw the world and herself through his eyes”. Levy wonders if she ever “puts her own eyes back in”, and considers her own narrowing of vision at times when “other things had become bigger. Perhaps overwhelming.”
Here is Levy on the French writer and film-maker Marguerite Duras: “She thinks as deeply as it is possible to think without dying of pain … She puts everything in to language. The more she puts in, the fewer words she uses.” At her best, Levy pulls off a similar feat, plunging into the depths, taking us with her.
Freya Berry
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Poetry
A dazzling voice
Bad Diaspora Poems
Momtaza Mehri
Bad Diaspora Poems Momtaza Mehri
A dazzling voice
The long-awaited debut collection from the former Young People’s Poet Laureate for London invites readers to consider the concept of diaspora. Mehri brings unflinching discursive skills to verse that melds criticism, autobiography and essay while still achieving a crisp sonic momentum characteristic of lyric poetry.
The meanings of diaspora in this collection are as varied as the forms Mehri deploys: prose poems, found poems, poems using emojis and erasures. “Diaspora is witnessing a murder without getting blood on your shirt.” “I don’t want to guard something I don’t own.” Mehri finds a new tone somewhere between Gwendolyn Brooks’s effortless musicality and Carolyn Forché’s noun-laced haunting intensity. Hers is a dazzling voice that refuses to speak from a podium, preferring to examine guilt, culture and personhood from within the “nightly decision” of community.
Oluwaseun Olayiwola
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Fiction
Life after the apocalypse
Juice
Tim Winton
Juice Tim Winton
Life after the apocalypse
Tim Winton and speculative fiction may seem an odd combination. His novels excel at the here and now, depicting lives at the margins, young love and young parenthood, violence at the hands of fathers. But the harsh beauty of the western Australian landscape has long been a presence in his work, and Winton has also long highlighted his country’s fragility in the face of climate chaos, and been fiercely critical of the exploitation of Australia’s mineral wealth. So the cli-fi premise of Juice, his latest novel, could be a perfect Winton fit.
Set in an unspecified future, some centuries from now, the book opens on a man and a girl driving across a landscape blackened by ashes. The hellscape is worthy of the Mad Max franchise, with slave colonies springing up from the parched earth like termite mounds. There are echoes of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road here, too, in the black dust thrown up by the vehicle’s tyres, and in the child passenger, observing everything with a mute wariness. And Winton’s ending is a masterstroke, the heart-in-your-mouth final chapter one of the best things I’ve read in a long time.
Rachel Seiffert
£8.99 (RRP £9.99) – Purchase at the Guardian bookshop
Fiction
A historic hero
Yorùbá Boy Running
Biyi Bándélé
Yorùbá Boy Running Biyi Bándélé
A historic hero
Like the protagonist of Yorùbá Boy Running, Biyi Bándélé had been running from a young age. At 14, he won a writing competition at school; another award in his 20s, for his radio play script Rain, took him to London in 1990. He hit the ground running there, publishing his first novel, The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond, in 1991. This was the beginning of a prolific and multifaceted career that, sadly, came to an end when Bándélé died suddenly in 2022 at the age of 54.
At the time he was putting the finishing touches to his film adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s play Death and the King’s Horseman – a play very much centred on death and redemption and now available on Netflix as Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman. He was also working on this posthumous novel, Yorùbá Boy Running, partly inspired by the history of Bándélé’s great-grandfather, who, like his protagonist, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, was formerly enslaved.
One doesn’t come to a posthumous novel for its perfect finish; not all the sections of the book are as polished or as inventive as the opening part. The editors have done a great job of ordering and signposting the different sections with dates and thematic headings, making it easier to follow the sometimes intricate chronology of the narrative. We are lucky and grateful that the author was able to leave us with this bookend to his glorious if truncated career that began long ago in Kafanchan, Nigeria, when he started running towards a distinguished future in faraway London.
Helon Habila
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Environment
A message of hope
Into the Clear Blue Sky
Rob Jackson
Into the Clear Blue Sky Rob Jackson
A message of hope
Rob Jackson has a dream: to restore the Earth’s atmosphere to pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gases. For more than a decade, the professor of environmental sciences and chair of the Global Carbon Project has focused his research on reducing levels of methane, the greenhouse gas responsible for about a third of recent atmospheric heating. Methane concentrations are accelerating faster today than at any time. The cause is unclear but, as the climate heats up, it may may be due to emissions from tropical wetlands or thawing Arctic permafrost.
There is so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from fossil fuels that restoring its level to what it was before the industrial revolution is impossible. You would have to remove a trillion tons of pollution: “No one reading this book will live long enough to see that happen.” But that is not the case for methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas. Methane’s concentration could be restored to pre-industrial levels by removing “only” two to three billion tons: “My dream is to see this happen in my lifetime.” Jackson believes this is now the only way of slowing global warming in the next decade or two, in order to delay crossing critical temperature thresholds, such as 1.5 and 2C increases.
Jackson explains here the possible methods of “drawdown”, or cleansing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Extracting 400bn tons of carbon dioxide would cost $40tn, “larger than the combined annual GDPs of China and the US”. He frankly admits that removing methane from the air is more difficult than carbon dioxide. But the advantage is that, unlike carbon dioxide, it doesn’t need to be captured and stored underground.
Jackson points out the sobering fact that “no fossil fuel shows a sustained decline in global use”. Ultimately, this pollution will need to be removed if the Earth is to remain habitable. In this important book, Jackson makes a compelling case for methane removal, together with emissions reductions. He lucidly explains the threats facing the planet, as well as the science of drawdown. Through conversations with innovators, conservationists, business leaders and activists, he offers a powerful message of hope, showing how change can and must happen, if we are to restore the climate and reduce global temperatures.
PD Smith
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