The author’s first novel since 2013 – a stately sisterhood saga about a group of women whose lives haven’t turned out quite as planned – continually reframes our understanding of the quartet, practically offering four books for the price of one

This powerful portrait – an imaginary album cover – depicts one of many female Iranian vocalists banned from performing after the 1979 revolution

The Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian began her career as a photojournalist but, one after another, the publications in which her pictures appeared in Tehran were banned. In 2002, she switched her focus from news to art, though the boundaries between the two are porous. She took this photograph in 2011 as part of a project that featured professional Iranian female singers who, since the 1979 revolution, had been banned from performing or recording solo because of the regime’s interpretation of Islamic law.

Tavakolian made images of the singers as if they were in recording studios, mouthing their words or, as she described it, “performing in their mind in front of a large audience”; she also made imaginary album covers, like this one, for her muted divas. “For me,” she said, “a woman’s voice represents a power that if you silence it, imbalances society, and makes everything deform. I let Iranian women singers perform through my camera while the world has never heard them.” The project was called Listen. The ban on solo singing is still in place.

Women Power is at Villa Bassi Rathgeb Museum, Abano Terme, Italy from 22 March to 21 September

When Jacob Dunne hit James Hodgkinson in a pub brawl, he had no idea the single punch would kill him. He recounts how his victim’s mother, Joan, helped turn his life around, while she reveals what drove her to confront the stranger who took her boy’s life – and how they feel now the story has inspired a new play

I was released from prison on New Year’s Eve 2012. I came out with more complex needs than I had before going in: lower self-esteem, fewer aspirations, less optimistic about the future. I was angry at myself and others. I had none of the skills required to communicate, be vulnerable or support myself. I was destined to join the 46% of people in England and Wales who reoffend within their first year post-prison. I was 20 years old with no fixed address, no qualifications or work experience and manslaughter on my criminal record.

At such a juncture of history, Hollywood must deliver its best: melodrama, conspiracy, dreams – not to mention the films

There is a common complaint among film buffs that cinema, dominated by superhero fantasies and blockbuster franchises, isn’t what it used to be. They look back misty-eyed to the 1940s heyday of the studio system or to the 1970s rise of the counterculture auteurs as celluloid golden ages that are destined never to be repeated.

It is, then, a rebuke to the naysayers that the 97th Academy Awards boasts a full array of compelling genres: steamy melodrama, political conspiracy thriller, science-fiction action and disaster epic.

The BBC’s Towards Zero follows the scandalous life and loves of an adulterous tennis pro, and it’s slick from the get-go. Plus, Tom Hanks narrates epic nature show The Americas – and it’s Oscars night!

9pm, BBC One
Challengers meets Agatha Christie in the latest slick adaptation, which follows the aftermath of the scandal of adulterous pro tennis player Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) – who holidays at his coastal family pile with his wife and ex-wife. At Gull’s Point, owned by the no-nonsense Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston), there are more guests and residents with grudges. Naturally, a murder is ahead. Hollie Richardson

City damaged during occupation by Islamic State group reopens 850-year-old mosque in time for Ramadan as reconstruction gathers pace

In the small courtyard of Sara’s grandmother’s house, children are running and playing as if time had never passed. “The house kept our memories,” Sara says, sitting on the sofa of the courtyard. “It seems like we never left. On the contrary, when we came back, we felt we belonged to this house.”

Located in the old Iraqi city of Mosul, right behind the Great Mosque of al-Nuri, their home is part of the local cultural heritage. It was heavily damaged during the occupation by Islamic State (IS) and the battle to reclaim the city by Iraqi armed forces, backed by US coalition airstrikes. Sara and her family were forcibly displaced during the fighting in 2017 and for many years feared they would never see their home intact again.

Veteran director, who originally opposed adapting 1967 film for the stage, is ‘very proud’ as Menier Chocolate Factory production will move to London’s Garrick theatre

The Menier Chocolate Factory has announced that its acclaimed production of The Producers is to transfer to the West End this autumn. Having sold out its three-month run at the 180-seat London venue before first night, it is set to move to the Garrick theatre. But according to its original creator Mel Brooks, the musical might never have happened at all.

The 98-year-old Brooks has told the Guardian he was initially reluctant to adapt his 1967 movie for the stage. Only through the persistence of a producer did he relent.

He looked the part – and sounded even better. And the frontman of New York Dolls, who has died aged 75, was deeper than many gave him credit for

• News – David Johansen, frontman of New York Dolls, dies aged 75
• Gallery – David Johansen: a life in pictures

Nick Kent’s fabled 1974 NME piece about New York Dolls, Dead End Kids on the Champs-Élysées, is packed with characters and incident. The band have arrived in France after a showcase gig at London boutique Biba, marred by various members getting caught while attempting to shoplift from the store. Their famously dissolute guitarist Johnny Thunders vomits copiously in front of the assembled press at a record company reception to welcome the band to France, then pukes again midway through a “horrendous, tuneless” Dolls gig at Paris’s prestigious Olympia theatre. Bassist Arthur Kane, a large man clad in a ballerina’s tutu who apparently looks “like he’d just been run over by a truck load of Valium” confides that he’s in fear of his life: the last groupie he slept with tied him up in his sleep and attempted to cut off his thumb with a knife.

And yet, even in such exalted company, there’s no doubt who the star of the show is. Frontman David Johansen never appears to stop talking throughout, an endless, wildly entertaining source of tall tales – at one juncture, he claims to have been an underage star of gay porn films – hysterical bitching about other artists (John Lennon is an “asshole hypocrite”, Keith Richards is “past it”, Mott the Hoople’s Ian Hunter has “terrible piggy eyes”) and eminently quotable statements: “We attract only degenerates to our concerts”; “We want to be known as the tackiest boys in New York.” Whatever you made of New York Dolls’ music – and, as the evident distaste with which host Bob Harris greeted their appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test proved, it was nothing if not divisive – you would have a hard time arguing that Johansen wasn’t fantastically good at the business of being a rock star.

The star, who had been in the Sequence before solo hit Wish I Didn’t Miss You, was died from her injuries in Alabama

Singer Angie Stone, known for her hit Wish I Didn’t Miss You, has died at the age of 63.

A representative for the singer confirmed to Variety that Stone was killed in a car crash in Montgomery, Alabama. She had reportedly been on her way home from a show and was the only person who died in the crash.