Arts & Life

Kalieaswari Srinivasan (Yalini) and Antonythasan Jesuthasan (Dheepan) at Pole Emploi in Dheepan.

Arts

'Dheepan' Tells A Refugee's Affecting Story, Until It Doesn't

5:00pm May 05, 2016

by Scott Tobias

The winner of the Palme D'Or at 2015's Cannes Film Festival, director Jacques Audiard's latest begins with a gratifyingly specific story of one man's life, but its trajectory works against it.

Books
Arts

'The Queue' Carries On A Dystopian Lineage

3:33pm May 05, 2016

by Carmen Maria Machado

Basma Abdel Aziz's new novel is set in an unspecified Middle Eastern city, where an endless line snakes back from the mysterious Gate where citizens await pronouncements from a sinister government.

Newly Released Documents Detail Traumas Of China's Cultural Revolution

1:44pm May 05, 2016

Historian Frank Dikötter says newly opened archives offer fresh details about the chaos China experienced in the 1960s, when Chairman Mao urged students to take to the streets.

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Books
Arts

Novelist Richard Russo: 'I Find Myself Now ... Having Lived The American Dream'

11:11am May 05, 2016

by NPR Staff

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author says his blue-collar grandfather would have been astonished by the life Russo leads. His new book, Everybody's Fool, is a sequel to 1993's Nobody's Fool.

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Arts

Captain America, Aaron Burr, And The Politics Of Killing Your Friends

9:56am May 05, 2016

by Linda Holmes

Captain America: Civil War drops some of the politics of the comics on which it's based, but it tells a different, equally current political story.

Empty storefronts line the streets of Northern Cambria, Pa., Jennifer Haigh's hometown.

'Heat And Light' Digs For The Soul Of Coal Country

6:44pm May 04, 2016

by Lynn Neary

Jennifer Haigh grew up in small town Pennsylvania, where jobs disappeared when coal mines closed. Her new novel explores the changes that mining — and now fracking — has brought to nearby communities.

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Arts

From 'Once' To 'Sing Street': Director John Carney Infuses Movies With Music

1:33pm May 04, 2016

The Irish director and screenwriter talks to Fresh Air's Ann Marie Baldonado about his new film, which tells the story of a young teenager in 1980s Dublin who discovers pop music and starts a band.

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Books
Arts

To Play Sports Under Taliban Rule, 'Different Kind Of Daughter' Dressed As A Boy

1:33pm May 04, 2016

Growing up in the tribal region of Pakistan, Maria Toorpakai pretended she was a boy in order to compete as a weightlifter. Later she became an internationally known squash player.

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Books
Arts

'Where's Warhol?' Turns The Waldo Concept Into A Work Of Art

11:07am May 04, 2016

by Etelka Lehoczky

High art is highly entertaining in this grown-up goof on the Where's Waldo? books. Readers hunt down a tiny Andy Warhol against a series of elaborately detailed art and culture-themed backgrounds.

Books
Arts

Unquiet Minds Make Absorbing Reading In 'Imagine Me Gone'

7:00am May 04, 2016

by Heller McAlpin

Adam Haslett's new novel focuses on a family tormented by father-and-son battles with chronic depression and anxiety. He captures the lasting reverberations of suicide with precision and tenderness.