Madagascar rarely makes front page news but the toppling of its president by protesters led by Gen Z Madagascar is part of a phenomenon that stretches from Nepal to Indonesia and the Philippines to Morocco. Leaderless groups, formed online, have learned from one another as they take to the streets to vent their frustration against what they see as corrupt older elites and a lack of economic opportunity for their generation.
Our southern Africa correspondent, Rachel Savage, explains how a tumultuous month unfolded on the Indian Ocean island and explores the deep-seated discontent that led to the military siding with student demonstrators to force President Andry Rajoelina out of power.
Five essential reads in this week’s edition
Spotlight | A far-right fight club on their hands Ben Makuch reports on security service monitoring of ‘active clubs’ as they move across borders to spread extremism, mixing the behaviour of football hooligans with the ideology of the Third Reich
Benin bronzes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Photograph: Art2010/Alamy
Spotlight | Nothing to see here? Due to open within weeks,Nigeria’s Museum of West African art is intended to showcase the Benin bronzes and other masterpieces stolen by 19th-century colonisers. But the project has been beset by political rows that mean, as Philip Oltermannand Eromo Egbejule report, visitors will see more replicas than original pieces
Science | Waiting for graphene to explode Two decades after the material was first produced and then much hyped, graphene has dropped from business and general discussion. Julia Kollewe reports on the successes and setbacks of taking it from lab to mainstream use
Opinion | An A-level in English won’t make integration work A government demand that immigrants get a qualification that most British citizens don’t have if they want to earn the right to stay is the latest absurd way to focus on ‘outsiders’ rather than address domestic problems, argues Nesrine Malik
Culture | The hardest part David Harewood reflects on returning to play Othello after almost 20 years and with fellow Black actors looks at how attitudes to Shakespeare’s most difficult tragedy have changed
What else we’ve been reading
The year’s Stirling prize has gone to a social housing complex for older people in south-east London. Catherine Slessor writes with great enthusiasm about how the award-winning architects Witherford Watson Mann have completely reimagined accommodation for later life. Out with disorientating corridors, in with bright, informal, nature filled spaces, described by the Stirling judges as “a provision of pure delight”. Emily El Nusairi, deputy production editor
Kathryn Lewek as the Queen Of The Night in The Magic Flute at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
I saw The Magic Flute in Paris last year, and it was fascinating to see how different opera houses interpret the staging. This review of a London production made me reflect on the way different directors handle staging and sound to bring the story to life. It reminded me of listening to the Queen of the Night’s aria when I was growing up and the experience of seeing opera live. Hyunmu Lee, CRM executive
In January 1776, Virginia’s Port City of Norfolk Was Set Ablaze, Galvanizing the Revolution. But Who Really Lit the Match?
Blaming the British for the destruction helped persuade some wavering colonists to back the fight for independence. But the source of the inferno was not what it seemed
Scientists and community members in Altadena are testing ways that California species can assist efforts to rebuild
You Can See the Parthenon Without Scaffolding for the First Time in Decades
The temporary structures will return next month—but in the meantime, visitors will enjoy rare unobstructed views of the ancient hilltop temple in Athens
As a long-overdue ceasefire takes hold amid the ruins of Gaza, the President’s visit to Jerusalem is more about transactional politics than transformative peace. By David Remnick
With its standout deals and generous employment practices, the warehouse chain became a feel-good American institution. In a fraught time, it can be hard to remain beloved. By Molly Fischer
Donald Trump’s Deep-State Wrecking Ball
Russell Vought is using the White House budget office to lay waste to the federal bureaucracy—firing workers, decimating agencies, and testing the rule of law. By Andy Kroll
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue of LARB “Alien“,which wades into the unfamiliar. In Greta Rainbow’s “Tourists,” a woman travels to foggy Athens, where she confronts the unknowability of the city and her partner. In Sara Levine’s “Peter and the Women,” Peter (badly, ineptly, inappropriately, indecently) manages the women in his life: his hospice-bound mother and her nurse, as well as his girlfriends and one-night stands. And in Ari Braverman’s “Dogs of the Solar Steppe,” the narrator faces a decade-long punishment, performing domestic labor for a woman called Big Mother. Her former life assumes a “sheen of fantasy,” and the story warns us of “the easy slippage between one state and another.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 10.19.25 Issue features Astead W. Herndon on the mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani; Emily Bazelon on the state of the rule of law in the U.S. under Trump; Andrew Ross Sorkin on 1929 and the rise of crypto investing; Parul Sehgal on Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel; and more.
The conflict over compulsory service for the nation’s ultra-Orthodox has become a stand-in for a larger struggle over the country’s right-wing, religious turn — and could determine its future.
A critic’s power lies in the testing of deeply held beliefs about the nature of art and art’s place in the world against the experience of specific artworks.
Authority by Andrea Long Chu
All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess by Becca Rothfeld
Those Passions: On Art and Politics by T.J. Clark
Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies by Jonathan Kramnick
The MAGA movement is not fed by conservative ideas but by a nihilistic, apocalyptic determination to stage a counterrevolution against the Sixties, against liberalism, against even democracy itself.
When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Ganz
Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right by Laura K. Field
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