sectarian

A gripping tale of love across the divide, Trespasses – which has been shortlisted for this year’s Women’s prize – is the debut novel of Louise Kennedy, a former chef who began writing in her mid 40s. Set in a garrison town near Belfast in 1975, it revolves around 24-year-old Cushla Lavery, a Catholic primary school teacher who also helps out behind the bar at the family pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a married Protestant barrister who is twice her age and who defends Catholic men he believes have been unjustly…

An on-the-ground study suggests sectarian identity in the Middle East is tied to domestic matters, and is not part of a larger, transnational religious split. To conduct the study, the scholars designed a survey of Shi’a pilgrims walking to Karbala for the holy day of Arba’een. Pictured are people walking during the annual pilgrimage in 2015. Credit: MIT As the old adage has it, all politics is local. That might seem a quaint…