BlinkDash

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJ2eq7azu82mnKesX6O0brXNrZyrmZOptrexjmtna2tfmbKke49vZq2glWLEqrrTnqmknZWlsrN50q2cr52eYrO2uMueqWaxlaG5sMPSraannV2jrrW1zqeYpWWglr%2Bs

Top 10sBooksTop 10 books about being aloneNovelist Rebecca Dinerstein chooses her top 10 books on solitude, remoteness and physical or psychic isolation Writing and reading are famously solitary acts; the loneliness of literature is expected, even embraced. But several writers have expanded solitude’s role, from a necessary condition to a central subject. Lonely characters speak more intimately to the reader, having no ready companion in their own world. The unaccompanied character becomes an avatar for the reader: a pairing that casts the reader as an active explorer, rather than a wallflower in a richer social scene.

Explain it to me quicklyScott MorrisonScott Morrison channelled Sacha Baron Cohen. For our series Explain It To Me Quickly, one Guardian Australia staffer asked another to explain why … quickly I’m seeing a lot of Borat jokes on Twitter today, centuries after Borat was a thing. Why? Because the prime minister of Australia, days before he was expected to announce an election, performed a Borat impression in parliament. He imitated the voice and mannerisms of the comedy character at the centre of the 2006 film to say that something was “very nice, very nice” (including hand gestures).

24 Mar 202307.31 EDTFinal thoughtsWell, that was an entertaining evening of football. There wasn’t a huge crowd but those that did make it out to Parramatta for the Socceroos’ homecoming were rewarded with an impressive showing from Graham Arnold’s side. Jackson Irvine was excellent, Duke and Goodwin stood out, Souttar and Rowls were solid at the back, O’Neill put in a fine debut performance and Kuol bagged his first Socceroos goal. Oh, and Alex Robertson needlessly kicked off near the end to endear himself to his new Australian fans.

‘The only people to blame for whatever is happening now, is us – the youth. Because we take what we get sitting down. Freedom is not something that is given.’ Photograph: Stephen Tayo/The GuardianView image in fullscreen‘The only people to blame for whatever is happening now, is us – the youth. Because we take what we get sitting down. Freedom is not something that is given.’ Photograph: Stephen Tayo/The GuardianMusicThe Nigerian pop star on Black Lives Matter, how British fans find it easier to tune into his wavelength – and why everyone’s got it wrong about Muammar Gaddafi

Book of the dayFictionReviewThis taut debut about a working-class young man wrestling with masculinity and lack of opportunity feels like a genuinely necessary book Novels about precarity are a precarious business. Far too many debuts of recent years claim to capture what it is like to be a young person in this age of intersecting economic and social crises, when in reality they focus on a set of experiences that are much narrower, much more class-specific and much more temporary.

ArtAt a new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, a ‘reckoning and reclaiming’ is taking place with a devastating portion of history “The Salem witch trials are an example of a community at its absolute worst.” This is what Anna Danziger Halperin, associate director of the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society, answered when I asked her why she thinks they have remained a powerful part of the American imagination for well over 300 years.

MoviesReviewZiad Jarrah, the hijacker-pilot on the United 93 flight, is reinvented as a considerate husband in Anne Zohra Berrached’s film Anne Zohra Berrached’s film is ambitious and interestingly intended, but naive and flawed, with a fundamental problem, which is right up there in the title. It presents us with a romantically imagined fictional couple inspired by Ziad Jarrah, the Lebanese-born 9/11 hijacker-pilot on the United 93 flight and his one-time German-Turkish partner Aysel Şengün, whom he had met while a student drawn into al-Qaida’s notorious Hamburg Cell.

ShortcutsJK RowlingSome people's surnames are mysterious, such as David Bowie's or Jonathan Powell's. But not Tim Dowling'sJK Rowling explains how to pronounce her surname guardian.co.ukHow do you pronounce JK Rowling's surname? We know how she pronounces it – in her recent interview in Weekend magazine she made it clear it rhymes with "bowling" – and yet she also said she never corrects anyone any more and that in the States her name is almost exclusively pronounced so that it rhymes with "