| | | | | As the emirate’s ruler espoused gender equality, four royal women staked their lives on escaping his control.  Photo illustration by Joan Wong; Source photographs from Alamy; Getty The story opens at night in the Arabian Sea, where a young woman named Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum sits on the deck of a boat, looking up at the stars. Despite days spent suffering from nausea and exhaustion, Latifa, the daughter of Dubai’s ruling emir, was experiencing a thrilling new sensation: freedom. In a remarkable and harrowing investigation in this week’s issue, Heidi Blake details the incredible steps that Latifa had taken to flee Dubai, where she described living in “an open air prison” under her father’s abusive control. The urgency of Latifa’s years-long plan, which involved “training in extreme sports, obtaining a fake passport, and smuggling cash to a network of conspirators,” was matched by her father’s furious determination to get her back. And, as Blake details in this astonishing report, Latifa wasn’t the only woman in the family fighting to escape. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | | | | Editor’s Pick |  Books The Making of Jackie KennedyAs a student in Paris and a photographer at the Washington Times-Herald, the future First Lady worked behind the lens to bring her own ideas into focus. By Thomas Mallon | | | | |  | Tune in: On The Political Scene podcast, David Remnick talks to the staff writers Kelefa Sanneh and Andrew Marantz about the fall of Tucker Carlson—and what comes next. | | | | Cover Story | | For this week’s cover, titled “Room at the Top,” Barry Blitt imagines King Charles III struggling to fill out his Coronation Chair. Ahead of the coronation, this weekend, Blitt was asked to offer the monarch some advice. “I think he’s a dedicated watercolorist, isn’t he?” Blitt said. “So I’d tell him to always wash his brushes after he’s done, and that a pale yellow underpainting is a nice effect.” | | | | | | Writer’s Notebook |  Art work from Venere Italia / Instagram The staff writer Kyle Chayka, who covers technology and culture on the Internet, joins us today with a quick download on Italy’s newest influencer. Sandro Botticelli painted “The Birth of Venus,” his iconic depiction of the goddess washing up onshore in a scallop shell covered only by her flowing hair, around 1485. In April, the Italian government turned Botticelli’s Venus into an Instagram influencer. On her new account, Venus (Venere, in Italian) wears a stylish white linen shirt, carries a fashionable wicker handbag, and dons chunky gold jewelry to pose for travel snapshots. She rides her bike past landmarks like the Roman Colosseum and eats pizza alfresco. She takes a selfie in Piazza San Marco, her famous hair billowing in the wind. The official tourism campaign describes her as a “virtual influencer” who is thirty years old. It’s “Emily in Paris” but “Venus in Venice.” The campaign will reportedly cost nine million euros and is causing consternation among Italians who see it as a cheap caricature of their cultural heritage. As one aggrieved Instagram commenter put it, “The centrifugal force with which Botticelli is turning in his grave would be enough to produce the energy to illuminate the entire country for years to come.” Mythology-wise, however, it’s not entirely inappropriate: What else would the goddess of beauty, desire, and prosperity be doing today if not getting likes on social media? | | | | Culture Dept. | On Television On “Succession,” Logan Roy Is Living+Dying, his sons Kendall and Roman agree, is “very un-Dad.” By Jessica Winter | | Sketchbook The Cream of the CropIntroducing a farmers’ market with the highest standards. By Edward Koren | | Culture Desk O.C.D. On and Off the ScreenAn actor and a cartoonist learn about each other’s condition. A new friendship is born. By Philip Ettinger and Jason Adam Katzenstein | | | | | Fun & Games Dept. | Name Drop Play Today’s Quiz Can you guess the notable person in six clues or fewer? By Will Nediger | | Crossword A Challenging Puzzle Esperanza Spalding, for one: seven letters. By Brooke Husic | | Daily Cartoon Monday, May 1st By Tim Hamilton | | | | | | P.S. It’s May Day, a celebration of labor around the world. In 1934, the New Yorker contributors E. B. White and D. S. McMillan attended the parade marking the holiday, and reported back about the marchers’ demands: “The Communist parade on May Day started conservatively enough with a Scotch band and placards demanding a forty-hour week, but by three o’clock the demands were for a thirty-six hour week, and by the end of the parade thirty working hours was what they wanted. Give the Communists a mile and they take ten hours off the week.” | | | | Today’s newsletter was written by Ian Crouch. | | | | | | | |
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