Arts & Culture

Forget all that stiff-upper-lip stuff. If you're looking for evidence that the British have a big, beating heart underneath their reputation for reserve and restraint, look no further than Sunday's finale of their popular TV export, Downton Abbey.

"Furo Wariboko awoke this morning to find that dreams can lose their way and turn up on the wrong side of sleep." That's the first sentence of Blackass, the debut novel from Nigerian author A. Igoni Barrett, and if it sounds familiar, there's a good reason for that. The book is a long, bizarre riff on Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, in which a salesman wakes up to find he's become an insect.

Some of the best coffee beans in the world are grown in Africa, and while the number of coffee consumers there is growing, most Africans still don't drink it. That's something Rwanda's government would like to change.

The country's coffee industry, which nearly collapsed after the genocide in 1994, has gradually become one of its largest and most profitable agricultural exports. Rwanda exports 99 percent of its coffee.

Perhaps you first heard the name Esperanza Spalding in 2011, when an award that many were calling an easy win for Justin Bieber instead went to an eclectic young bass player, singer and composer.

Democrat Cory Booker, formerly the mayor of Newark, is now a senator and a frequent entry on "Washington's Most Eligible Bachelors" lists. We've invited him to play a game called "New Jersey? I prefer Old Jersey!" Three questions about old sports jerseys.

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What would the United States be without its immigrants? Imagine no pizza, no New York City Ballet, no Saul Bellow — and no new waves of talented émigré authors helping us to see American culture from fresh angles. With his first novel, A Replacement Life, Boris Fishman (who came to the United States from Belarus in 1988 when he was nine) staked himself a spot in the impressive lineup of immigrant writers born in the former Soviet Union.

BJ The Chicago Kid has sung backup for Usher, written songs for Mary J. Blige and been sampled by Kanye West. But on his new album, In My Mind, his own voice and lyrics are the main attraction.

Ever wondered what to do with that special memento from a past relationship, that token that's just too challenging to toss, not feasible to return, but yet too painful to hold on to?

And no, we're not talking about your broken heart, although we would all relish a quick fix for such.

While emotional fallout might be the thing we most often wish to be rid of after a relationship has ended, the tangibles — the bits and pieces of a life built together – can also make it challenging to let go and move on.