Guardian

2022 - 8 - 24

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Life and death: Inside the 26 August Guardian Weekly (The Guardian)

Six months of hell in Ukraine. Plus: recession stalks Europe.

Krishna Léger is a Michelin-recognised French chef – no great surprise there you might think, until you learn that his culinary journey to the top took him via gang crime, drug smuggling and some of France’s most notorious prisons. Nonetheless, the order in the early hours of 24 February from for months, the signs had been there in plain sight.

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Top 10 books about Israel (The Guardian)

I grew up on a kibbutz, on a diet of translated American science fiction, and never saw myself reflected until I read Philip K Dick. My favourite remains The ...

Ostracised by Israel’s literary establishment for most of his life, Kaniuk captures the horror of the 1948 war for a soldier abandoned by his commander, forced to hide amid the corpses as vultures circle overhead, in the first of these two classic novellas. In the second, two elderly fighters, disgusted by the modern state, go on a murderous spree against the “scumbags”, their ageing generation’s children (the Hebrew title, Nevelot, also meaning “corpses”) who they have grown to hate. But no one captures the sense of a single land divided by competing histories better than Darwish, who knew that it takes an act of naming a land to possess it. Or could it be the marginal pamphlets and pocket books of long-forgotten Zionist romance and pulp Hebrew detectives, where [David Tidhar](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/tidhar-david) – no relation – reigned supreme? This final collection sparkles, and poems such as Tel Aviv, 1935 simply capture the sense of a now-vanished world. Blincoe captures the shadowy atmosphere well: one that involves, then and now, spy-like operations and the threat of death hanging over anyone willing to sell. This groundbreaking Palestinian science-fiction anthology doesn’t always make for easy reading, though there is humour woven through the despair in some of the stories, as in Ahmed Masoud’s Application 39, which imagines a Palestinian bid for the Olympics as an escalation of crises. [Chaim Nachman Bialik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayim_Nahman_Bialik)? His two memorable years in the place he once called “a wild west of Holocaust survivors” were spent in the company of prostitutes, drunks and petty criminals . And it feels odd for me, having spent a decade writing novels on the intersection between the political and the fantastical, to have ventured on a big historical epic instead. Is it the poetry of Is it the holy triumvirate of Amos Oz, AB Yehoshua and David Grossman?

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It's easy to forget that lockdowns saved lives (The Guardian)

Brief letters: Blaming Covid | Profiting from poverty | Tree cover in Dorset | Giving the plot away | Mournful dogs.

The West Dorset constituency has tree cover of 1.3%, while tree cover in North, South and Mid Dorset [is around 11%, 23% and 10% respectively](https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/media/43913/woodland-indicators-by-parliamentary-constituency.pdf). But you’ve printed a letter ( [23 August](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/aug/23/an-f-bomb-in-ambridge-that-would-signal-the-end-times)) giving the plot away for [Marriage ](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/aug/14/marriage-review-sean-bean-and-nicola-walker-are-pitch-perfect)and I was going to watch it tonight. I’m no Marxist, but Karl Marx [put it well](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2650520-capital-is-dead-labour-which-vampire-like-lives-only-by-sucking): “Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” I steer clear of reviews when watching a recorded TV series. [Letters, 21 August](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/21/how-livestock-grazing-is-benefiting-the-planet)) needs clarifying.

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From casseroles to curry: six ways with chicken thighs (The Guardian)

We might have once argued over the breast meat at the Sunday roast, but these days we're more likely to clash forks over juicier, more flavoursome thighs.

[Somer Sivrioglu](https://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/barbecue-chicken-skewers-green-lentils-and-pastirma) chooses thighs for his Turkish-style barbecued skewers, marinated in yoghurt and herbs. [Nigel Slater](https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/mar/07/nigel-slaters-recipes-for-chicken-pasta-and-steamed-chocolate-pudding?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other), meanwhile, uses his baked chicken thighs (skin on) as the base of a creamy, lemony pasta. It’s wrapped into tortillas with a [sriracha](https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/jun/17/try-another-sriracha-hot-sauce-shortage-no-cause-for-meltdown-grocers-say)-infused mayonnaise and crunchy radish salad. Sprinkle the onions with the spices and cook stirring, for about a minute, until fragrant. [Nigella Lawson ](https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/oct/17/nigella-lawson-new-favourite-comfort-food-recipes)adds smoked paprika, dijon mustard and maple syrup to her marinade and serves her deep-fried thigh on a burger bun with iceberg lettuce and garlic mayo. While Jamaican curry powder can be a little bit challenging to find in Australia, it is readily available online and in some specialty stores. [Thomasina Miers’ ](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/14/chicken-karaage-recipe-tacos-radish-salad-banoffee-pie-cajeta-toffee-sauce-thomasina-miers)fried chicken comes bite-sized and karaage-style. “The fat is important for the taste,” he says. [Thomas Frake](https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/apr/19/thomas-frakes-buttermilk-fried-chicken-and-leftover-slaw) uses a classic combination of buttermilk or yoghurt with spices such as paprika, cayenne pepper and oregano, then lets his tenderised thigh fillets marinade in the fridge for a couple of hours. He also suggests cooking skin-side down to keep the juices contained. Leave your raw chicken in this brine in the fridge for up to four hours for the ultimate tender, juicy result. We might have once argued over the breast meat at the Sunday roast, but these days we’re more likely to clash forks over juicier, more flavoursome thighs.

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'Everyone loved each other': the rise of Yugonostalgia (The Guardian)

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, made up of six republics –Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, plus ...

“But this generation has the luxury of being far enough away to not have all the biases, and the trauma that comes with it. “So I always had the feeling that the history of where I came from is a taboo topic.” When he found the choir, he felt he could finally “patch up some holes.” “But when I grew up, I realised there were things about it I did not like.” She cites the lack of LGBT rights and suppression of political dissent. However, she says she can still identify with the “spirit” of Yugoslavia. “My impression as a child was that [Yugoslavia] was the most wonderful time and everything was harmonious,” she says. “Growing up, Yugoslavia seemed like a paradise to me,” he says, explaining that many people fleeing the Czechoslovakian regime would escape to Yugoslavia. I can speak their language and we have a similar culture.” “It was too complicated for a seven-year-old to understand, or so they thought,” he remembers. “All our infrastructure is from that period, and now it’s falling apart,” he adds. “This system was very specific to Yugoslavia,” she says, explaining its divergence from Stalinist state-ownership of industry. Tito founded the non-aligned movement and maintained balanced relationships between the west and the USSR, and Yugoslav citizens could travel to either region. On a recent day in Belgrade, as the sun beat down, coaches pulled up and departed outside the Museum of Yugoslavia, an imposing mid-century block in the Serbian capital.

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