Gore Vidal, Celebrated Author, Playwright, Dies

In the finale of Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, Mallikajaan (Manisha Koirala), who reigns over the courtesans in the titular neighborhood in pre-Independence India, receives word that the British Army has arrested her daughter, Bibbojaan, for her rebellion in colluding with Indian freedom fighters. “All these years, we were just tawaifs [courtesans], but now we have become patriots of our homeland,” she says defiantly, tears welling up her eyes.

When Kabul fell to the Taliban, returning the country to the fundamentalist group’s control after two transformative decades, scores of Afghan women were compelled to flee. Those who remained faced a reality in which they could no longer be who they are: journalists deleted evidence of their work, artists destroyed their creations, and graduates set fire to their degrees. While the Taliban forced many Afghan women to abandon their workplaces and universities, some chose to fight back.

Artists from Universal Music Group, which include Drake, Adele, Bad Bunny and Billie Eilish, will be returning to TikTok as the two parties have struck a new licensing agreement following an approximately three-month long dispute. The two sides said Thursday that they are “now working expeditiously to return music by artists represented by Universal Music Group and songwriters represented by Universal Music Publishing Group to TikTok in due course.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Taylor Swift, whose recently released album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” has hit No.

If you love the Pixar movie Up and would like to stay in a house tied to balloons, Airbnb has the home for you. The short-term rental company has recreated the film’s famous house, attached to more than 8,000 balloons, in Abiquiu, New Mexico to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Up, and is offering guests the chance to stay in it for select dates—for free.

In the spring of 2014, when I set out to write the novel that would become The Idea Of You, I didn’t plan on writing something that was revolutionary or controversial. I wanted to write a story about Solène Marchand, a woman on the cusp of 40 who rediscovers and redefines herself through an unexpected love with a much younger man who happens to be a world-famous celebrity.

Five years after Heather Morris’s 2017 novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz topped the New York Times’ paperback fiction list, a limited series of the same name will stream on Peacock starting today (May 2). The novel and six-episode series both center on the story of a real-life Auschwitz prisoner, Lali Sokolov, whom the Nazis forced to tattoo identifying numbers on to fellow inmates.