Mesopotamia
After the Flood: There Are Rivers in the Sky, by Elif Shafak, reviewed
Water – essential to life and civilisation, but also a potentially destructive force – is the theme linking three disparate strands in Shafak’s magnificent new novel
Sound made visible
What particularly excites Silvia Ferrara, the author of The Greatest Invention, is not language per se but writing – that…
Meet Congo, the Leonardo of chimps, whose paintings sell for £14,500
Three million years ago one of our ancestors, Australopithecus africanus, picked up a pebble and took it home to its…
Caves of ice
Modern civilisation depends on refrigeration — but we have been trying to manufacture cold for at least 4,000 years, says Michael Bywater
Invading the womb of gods
The fighters of the Islamic State are bringing a deadly new intolerance to a territory rich in ancient sects
City of a thousand and one nights
Ali A. Allawi on the fluctuating fortunes of Iraq’s fabled capital
