Zora Neale Hurston was one of the great provocateurs of 20th-century American letters. Active from the 1920s to the 1950s, Hurston was best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, which fascinated readers with its vivid depiction of black female sexuality. Richard Wright, the black American author of the bestselling 1940 novel

The writer is founder of Sifted and a former FT Moscow bureau chief On a trip to Silicon Valley a while ago, I had back-to-back meetings with the founder of a fintech firm, the head of a start-up incubator and a senior executive at a virtual reality company. By chance all had one characteristic in

Jane Hume, Australia’s minister for financial services, argued in a speech last month that the rapidly growing crypto industry had the potential to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and boost Australia’s economic growth by more than 50 per cent. But if the country voted for the opposition Labor party at the May 21

The government of Rwanda on Thursday confirmed that it had signed a “bold new partnership” with the UK under which some people seeking refugee protection in Britain will be transferred to the central African country while awaiting processing. The announcement comes ahead of a speech in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson will pledge to tackle

Let us see if Elon Musk has learnt anything. Four years ago, the Tesla chief executive loosely offered to take his electric vehicle company private, at one point misleadingly posting a tweet that he had “funding secured” for such a transaction. This message flouted US securities law sufficiently for US regulators to require Musk’s social

Remember Alphawave? In 2021, the once Toronto-based semiconductor IP company IPO’d on the LSE to great fanfare, with some drawing comparisons between its capital-light business model and previous stock exchange darling ARM. The valuation, at £3bn for a company with just £40mn of trailing revenues, matched the hype. Then it all went a bit pear

The head of the Quds Force, the elite branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, has vowed to continue “leading” militias across the region at a time nuclear talks have stalled because of the force’s terrorist designation by the US. In a strong speech to supporters in Tehran on Thursday, Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani said his Quds

So potently provocative is director Cecilia Alemani’s vision for a feminised Venice Biennale that, almost a month before the event, the effect was already pronounced in the city’s early-launching off-site shows. Alemani’s exhibition The Milk of Dreams, titled after a fairy tale by the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, will include just 21 men out of

Beatrice Bulgari and her husband Nicola have two art collections. One is spread between their multiple homes — in New York, Rome, Paris and Sicily — and ranges from Bellotto to Cy Twombly, Michelangelo Pistoletto and William Kentridge. The other, created by Beatrice alone, “is about this size”, she laughs, spreading her hands wide apart.

While 80 countries from Albania to Zimbabwe are participating in this year’s Venice Biennale, the national pavilion of one traditional participant now stands closed and empty: that of the Russian Federation. The pavilion — built just before the 1917 Soviet revolution and renovated last year — was to feature artists Kirill Savchenkov and Alexandra Sukhareva,

It was, she says, “a bumpy start”. Surrounded by packing crates, Cecilia Alemani, curator of the 59th Venice Biennale, is speaking from the vast echoing spaces of the Arsenale, where her exhibition The Milk of Dreams is being installed. “What was very challenging was the total lack of certainty,” she adds, as she describes being

NoViolet Bulawayo burst on to the literary scene in 2013 with We Need New Names, whose exploration of the harshness of life in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and the immigrant experience won its author a place on that year’s Booker Prize shortlist. In her second novel, set in a thinly veiled Zimbabwe named “Jidada with a

Germany’s foreign intelligence service last year shunned an offer to meet former Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek in Moscow, fearing that the invitation to talk to the fugitive was a trap set up by Russia’s FSB spy agency, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times. German criminal prosecutors accuse Marsalek, Wirecard’s former second-in-command, of

Three weeks ago, a month after Russia launched its invasion, a Ukrainian composer named Yuri Shevchenko died of pneumonia, aged 68. He was trapped in a basement in Kyiv as the city was preparing for a possible siege. His passing might have escaped my notice had I not witnessed a striking tribute that recently took

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, said on Thursday that it would be impossible for the Baltic region to remain “non-nuclear” if Sweden and Finland joined the Nato alliance. “If Sweden and Finland join Nato, the length of the alliance’s land borders with Russia will more than double,” Medvedev, now deputy chair of Russia’s Security

In Japan they have codified the art of arranging food. It’s called moritsuke, and chefs sometimes quote it as an inspiration for their “plating” techniques. We often quote the truism that we “eat with our eyes”, that how the food looks can affect how it is enjoyed, and moritsuke demonstrates this. But, like ikebana, the

Good morning. A happy little bump in airline stocks yesterday from some good Delta earnings. Vindication for Armstrong! Sort of! Email us: robert.armstrong@ft.com and ethan.wu@ft.com. JPMorgan and the economy JPMorgan Chase is the most important bank on Wall Street and, arguably, the world. Its shares have fallen 25 per cent in the past six months.

Funding slowdowns in the tech industry tend to be staggered across three different markets. First, shares in public companies fall. Then venture capital deal valuations decline. Finally, early stage investment dries up. The first two stages are under way. But early stage investment is flying high. This is good news for anyone worried about a

Good morning and welcome to Europe Express. Among the last policy announcements expected before the Easter break is the outcome of the European Central Bank’s governing council meeting today, which may shed further light on how the Frankfurt-based bank seeks to reconcile apparently clashing priorities. We’ll explore the conundrum of helping countries borrow at affordable

In a speech delivered less than a week after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time since 2018, chair Jay Powell acknowledged the historic challenge confronting the US central bank: tame the highest inflation in 40 years without causing a “hard landing” with painful job losses and a sharp economic contraction. “No

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘That was frightening as hell’: Ukrainian MP on working in a war zone [MUSIC PLAYING] Gideon RachmanHello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week we’re hearing from inside Ukraine. I’m joined from