FluxDash

The ObserverBooksA year after Putin’s invasion, the award-winning novelist reflects on the silence of his compatriots, the betrayal of his mother tongue, and his hopes for the future Read an interview with Mikhail Shishkin My dearest one,They stole the language from us. We spoke and corresponded with you in the language of great Russian literature. Now, for the whole world, Russian is the language of those who bomb Ukrainian cities and kill children, the language of war criminals, the language of murderers.

Summer readingsSummer readingSummer readings: Zorba the Greek by Nikos KazantzakisFar from being unputdownable, this novel demands you cast it aside and emulate its great Greek hero in living life to the fullI'd heard of Zorba the Greek, in the way that the classics of modern literature totter into the subconscious even without being read or studied. It was only while holidaying in Greece in summer 2010 that I bought a tatty, overpriced Faber edition from a small bookshop in Athens as I waited for the boat to Heraklion, the main port of Crete where Nikos Kazantzakis, the book's author, was born and is buried.

The NorthernerSweet PimboWelcome to the Northerner, theguardian.com's weekly digest of the best of the northern press __________________ What's in a name? A lot, for me. I was over in Lancashire this week for the launch of the government's Bee Health strategy and it was great to find that the venue was near a village called Pimbo. I looked it up on Google Maps and couldn't understand at first why the high-definition maps were completely blank.

OperaYou need more than a good voice to sing the countertenor role of the sun-worshipping Egyptian leader. But it’s changed my life ‘Picture the audience naked.” The popular wisdom for overcoming stage fright was turned on its head the first time I was unveiled – body waxed, head shaved, and completely nude – in front of thousands of fully clothed opera-goers at the London Coliseum, in 2016. It was the premiere of a monumental new production of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten by Phelim McDermott, for English National Opera.

Jay Rayner on restaurantsFoodReviewBrace yourself: the aptly named BAM is a big hitter in every way – flavour, portion and noise Black Axe Mangal, 156 Canonbury Road, London N1 2UP (blackaxemangal.com). Small plates £6-10.50; large plates £15-24; desserts £6-7.50; wines from £30 One day in 1994, while waiting for his new restaurant to open, chef Fergus Henderson went to the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead along with all the other food pervs, for a screening of La Grande Bouffe.

InternetE-mail the rich and famousCelebrities Douglas Adams: 76206.2507@compuserve.com Tom Clancy: tomclancy@aol.com Quentin Crisp: HRHQCrisp@aol.com Macaulay Culkin: culkin@writeme.com Clint Eastwood: rowdiyates@aol.com Bob Hope: bobhope@bobhope.com Bob Hoskins: 75300.1313@compuserve.com Courtney Love:lilacs00@aol.com Madonna: Madonna@wbr.com Demi Moore: Demim2@aol.com Toni Morrison: morrison@pucc.princeton.edu Bob Mortimer: bobmortimer@hotmail.com Michael Stipe: : stipey@aol.com Oprah Winfrey: : harpo@interaccess.com Government Tony Blair does not have an email address for public disclosure, but there is a discussion area on the Number 10 site.

‘We’ve got lifesize orcs around the house. My wife puts up with a lot’: Jason in New Zealand. Photograph: Jessie Casson/The GuardianIf The Lord of the Rings had you yearning for New Zealand, or Julia Roberts on a bike made you fall in love with Bali, you’re not alone. But did you grab your passport and start packing? Meet the people who did by Kitty Drake‘As I binge-watched it hit me: Middle-earth does exist’The Lord of the Rings led Jason to New Zealand

Sonny Rollins plays his saxophone on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York. Photograph: New York Daily News Archive/NY Daily News/Getty ImagesIt’s one of the most romantic stories in music: the jazz star rejecting fame to practise on a New York bridge for two years. Now 91, Rollins recalls those long cold days – and how he has coped after losing the power to play by John FordhamIf you happened to be gazing idly from a window of New York City’s J train crossing the East River on the Williamsburg Bridge, most days between the summer of 1959 and the autumn of 1961, you might have glimpsed a lone saxophonist huddled into a cranny of the gigantic steel skeleton.

Book of the dayFiction in translationReviewThe contours of a relationship are echoed by the collapse of East Germany in this invigorating novel of lost love Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos is one of the bleakest and most beautiful novels I have ever read. On one level, it is a love story, or rather a story about the loss of love. It begins with a woman, Katharina, hearing about the death of her former lover.