Updates from this 4.45pm BST decider in Bordeaux
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Pre-match reading
Get in touch before and throughout the match on the email with any and all things you would like to bring to my attentions. I love reading your thoughts, even when you are having a go at me, so don’t be shy.
Continue reading...Tom Steyer has built his campaign for governor of California around affordability – he’s not the only Democrat testing the party’s appetite for a populist from the 1%
Tom Steyer has built his campaign for governor of California around affordability – and taxing the uber-wealthy.
It is perhaps an unusual message for a candidate with an estimated net worth of $2.4bn. But the hedge fund founder-turned climate activist and liberal mega-donor is pitching himself as a different kind of billionaire: one who wants people like him to pay far more in taxes.
Continue reading...Political oppression in Tehran, a witch’s tale from France, a film-maker in Nazi Germany … we weigh up the contenders for the International Booker prize 2026
This year’s International Booker prize shortlisted titles are a diverse bunch, both geographically – from Brazil to Taiwan – and in style, from mainstream blockbuster to experimental jeu d’esprit. As in recent years, independent presses are rewarded for their efforts in promoting translated fiction, providing four of the six titles. And the campaign for proper recognition of translators is finally paying off: for the first time in the prize’s 10-year history, all six books name the translator on the front cover. Here’s our guide to the prospects for each, ahead of the winner announcement on 19 May.
German-Iranian novelist Shida Bazyar reminds us in her novel The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran (Scribe), translated by Ruth Martin, that the people of Iran are the victims of history many times over. The story comes from four members of an Iranian family over 30 years. In 1979, young Behzad greets the Islamic revolution that deposes the Shah, but his hopes for a communist utopia (“a new Cuba”) are thwarted. Instead, he’s surrounded by people who have been waiting for the chance to become bullies all their lives. He and his wife, Nahid, flee to Germany: she takes over the story in 1989, followed by their daughter, Laleh, in 1999.
Continue reading...People want my life with premenstrual dysphoric disorder to be told as a neat arc. But chronic illnesses are more like messy, looping spirals – and realising that gave me hope
There was a moment, deep in the throes of my illness, when I realised I was never getting better. There was no cure for me: only ways to manage. At that time I was not managing very well.
Of course, writing about my past self in this way gives the illusion that I was once in the throes of my illness and that it did get better. This is deceptive. I live with a chronic illness called premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD. It is a severe form of premenstrual illness that leads to depression, anger and even suicidal ideation. It rears its head in the week or two before menstruation then goes away. One week I’d be lying on my bedroom floor, unable to move, starting fights with my partner. Then my period would come and I’d be back at work, seemingly fine, and completely oblivious to the person I’d been mere days before. Notably, this illness is chronic and recurring. I am always in, or just out of, or about to enter the throes of my illness. It does not get better in any static sense.
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Continue reading...When held with curiosity, beliefs can be productive, creative and alive, but they can also imprison us, closing down life itself
At a recent conference, I found myself in conversation with a fellow participant. We were exchanging ideas when I saw his expression shift. He began to speak at length about what it meant to be human on the spiritual path. As he spoke, I started to feel less like a collaborator and more like a one-person audience.
About 10 minutes in, I drifted. I wondered what they would offer us for lunch and whether I would make it home on the train.
Dr Nadine Levy is a senior lecturer at the Nan Tien Institute. She coordinates its health and social wellbeing program and the graduate certificate in applied mindfulness
Continue reading...I walked faster, sure that someone was lurking somewhere. Then a taxi pulled up next to me with an older businessman in the back seat
Read more in the kindness of strangers series
The Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst was not a safe place in the 1980s. There was this jittery vibe when the next heroin batch was coming in and people were overdosing like mad. But the area was also home to a scene of people who were into making little films or art and just going to the clubs in great clothes and dancing our butts off. I was one of them – 23, quite pretty and a hip underground darling.
One night I was walking home from Oxford Street after clubbing. I was always wary of my surroundings, because you grew up very quickly living in that area. But it was a nice night for a walk so I went for it. I remember how dark it was; a slender moon offering little in the way of light.
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