Arts & Life

KABUL (Reuters) – After a busy afternoon walking the catwalk in a luxury hotel in Kabul on Friday, Salma Hussaini was named Afghanistan’s first “Ms Valentine”. An Afghan model gets ready at the backstage, before the fashion show, as they celebrate Valentine’s Day in Kabul, Afghanistan, February 14, 2020. REUTERS/Omar …

“I liked the neatness of those times,” says Prof. Garrett Adams, the ruminative protagonist of Laurel Brett’s clever debut novel, “The Schrödinger Girl.” Those times are the 1950s, a decade Garrett admits had its problems, but he nonetheless longs for the containment of its routines, its boundaries. Unlike the confusing …

HOME MAKINGBy Lee Matalone194 pp. HarperPerennial/HarperCollins. Paper, $15.99. Image “Home making” is a phrase so fraught with political and social overtones that before opening this book I went to Google for a sterile definition: “The creation and management of a home, especially as a pleasant place in which to live.” …

A suspected new mural by artist Banksy is pictured in Marsh Lane in Bristol, Britain, February 13, 2020. REUTERS/Rebecca Naden LONDON (Reuters) – British street artist Banksy is thought to have given a Valentine’s Day gift to his home town of Bristol in western England with the appearance of a …

SOFIA (Reuters) – Bulgarian prosecutors have pressed new charges including unlawful possession of antiques of historical value against fugitive gambling tycoon Vasil Bozhkov, one of the country’s richest men, officials said on Thursday. FILE PHOTO: A 2nd century B.C. gold-plated cup is pictured at the “Thrace and the Ancient World” …

LONDON (Reuters) – Residents of a luxury London block who were trying to stop visitors to the neighboring Tate Modern art gallery from peering into their glass-walled apartments lost their case in the Court of Appeal on Wednesday. The Viewing Level at the Tate Modern gallery and a block of …

FILE PHOTO: An employee poses with an auction catalogue as she views ‘The Splash’ by David Hockney on display ahead of the Contemporary Art auction at Sotheby’s in London, Britain, February 7, 2020. REUTERS/Toby Melville LONDON (Reuters) – David Hockney’s Los Angeles pool painting “The Splash” fetched 23.1 million pounds …

EDEN MINEBy S. M. Hulse A book can be carried by a strong voice, and that’s what we get with Jo Faber. A gifted amateur artist in the town of Prospect, in rural northwestern Montana, the narrator of S. M. Hulse’s second novel, “Eden Mine,” is anchored by her brother, …

[ Read an excerpt from “The King at the Edge of the World.” ] Elizabeth I’s strategy was driven by expediency. Having been excommunicated by Pope Pius V, and out of step with Catholic Europe, she needed allies. In writing to Sultan Murad III, Elizabeth drew parallels between Protestantism and …

AS NEEDED FOR PAIN A Memoir of Addiction By Dan Peres SMACKED A Story of White-Collar Ambition, Addiction, and TragedyBy Eilene Zimmerman The addiction memoir may be the most vigorous subgenre spawned by the memoir boom of the 1990s, although the progenitor of the form is Thomas De Quincey’s “Confessions …