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Los Angeles (dpa) – Apple is making a major move into Formula 1, securing exclusive broadcast rights for the United States starting next year. The five-year deal will see Apple TV+ stream all Formula 1 sessions, including free practice, qualifying, sprint races and Grand Prix events. For Apple TV+ subscribers, there will be no additional costs for accessing Formula 1 content, at least initially. Selected races and sessions will also be available for free via the Apple TV+ app, though there is no confirmation of which events. The deal, reportedly worth $150 million annually, amounts to a total of $750 million over five years, nearly doubling the $80 million per year paid by the current rights holder, ESPN. Formula 1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali described the partnership as an "incredibly exciting" opportunity to expand the sport's presence in the US. The announcement comes as Formula 1 continues to grow its footprint in the US, with three Grand Prix races already on the calendar and Cadillac set to join Haas as the second US-based team next year. Apple's involvement in Formula 1 extends beyond broadcasting. The tech giant recently released the blockbuster film "F1 – The Movie", starring Brad Pitt and co-produced by record world champion Lewis Hamilton. The film grossed nearly $630 million globally, further cementing Apple's commitment to the sport. The deal was announced just hours before the US Grand Prix weekend kicked off in Austin, Texas, signaling Apple's intent to make a significant impact on the sport's future in the United States. The following information is not intended for publication dpa jmx yyzz n1 hc coh

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Cologne (dpa) – Autumn might be here, but has it brought its vibrant yellows and oranges into your kitchen? What better way to start than with a pumpkin. The easiest way to cook it is in the oven. And while it's hot, we're also going to roast an entire bulb of garlic. This removes its sharpness and gives it a light caramel flavour, creating the perfect sauce for pasta. The bacon not only adds a strong umami kick to the dish but also a slight crunch — a nice contrast to the soft spaghetti and the almost creamy pumpkin. If you want a bit more texture, the homemade roasted pumpkin seeds add a satisfying crunch. And for those longing for a touch of summer, finely chopped spring onions bring a fresh note to the dish. Ingredients for 4 servings of pasta with garlic, pumpkin and bacon 1 large bulb of garlic 4 tbsp olive oil 1 Hokkaido pumpkin (approx. 1.2 kg) 1/2 tsp smoked paprika powder Salt Pepper 100 g bacon (slices) 400 g spaghetti 2 spring onions (optional) Preparation Preheat the oven to 180°C (fan). Halve the garlic bulb crosswise, drizzle with a little olive oil, and wrap it tightly in baking paper. Place it in a large baking dish and roast in the oven for about 30 minutes until the garlic is soft and lightly browned. Halve the pumpkin, remove the seeds and fibrous flesh. Rinse the seeds thoroughly under warm water until they are no longer slimy, and dry them well (ideally, let them air-dry overnight for extra crispiness). Mix 1 tbsp olive oil with 1/2 tsp smoked paprika, salt, and pepper – make sure the seeds are coated in this marinade. Spread the seeds in the baking dish next to the garlic, ensuring they are spaced apart, and roast for about 12–15 minutes until crispy and golden brown. Cut the pumpkin into small cubes (approx. 2 cm) and place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Lay the bacon slices crosswise on an oven rack. Place the baking dish on the lower rack of the oven if the pumpkin seeds and garlic are not yet done; otherwise, remove them and set aside. Place the pumpkin on the middle rack and the bacon on the rack above it. Bake both for about 8–10 minutes until the bacon is crispy and golden brown and the pumpkin is tender. Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti al dente in lightly salted water according to the package instructions. Prep the spring onions by washing and drying them, trimming the roots and dark green parts, and slicing them into thin rings. Scoop the roasted garlic out of its skin into a large pot. Mash it finely with a fork and season with salt and pepper. Add a ladle of pasta water and 1 tbsp olive oil, then stir to combine. Add the drained spaghetti to the garlic mixture and mix well. Break the bacon into small pieces and gently fold it in along with half of the pumpkin cubes. Serve the dish on plates, distributing the remaining pumpkin cubes on or next to the spaghetti. Garnish with spring onions and roasted pumpkin seeds as desired. The following information is not intended for publication dpa/tmn ueh yyzz n1 xlt cwg sw coh

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Los Angeles (tca/dpa) – Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan is dipping his hands into the world of literature and is revisiting the small screen. On Monday,Variety reported that the Shyamalan will direct "Magic 8 Ball," a live-action series based on the popular Mattel fortune-telling toy. “Been working on this for a couple years … Who’s in?,” Shyamalanwrote in an Instagram post featuring the screenplay for the pilot episode , with a Magic 8 Ball resting on top. Shyamalan will serve as co-creator with Brad Falchuk, co-creator of hit TV shows such as "Glee" and "American Horror Story." Falchuk will also be writing the forthcoming TV series, which marks Shyamalan’s return to television since the conclusion of "Servant," the Apple TV+ series directed by him, that ended in March 2023 after four seasons. No details on the series’ have been announced. On Tuesday, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker from Lower Merion also released "Remain," the book he co-wrote with famed novelist Nicholas Sparks of "The Notebook" and "A Walk to Remember" fame. The book melds Shyamalan‘s knack for supernatural horror and Sparks’ penchant for romance. While "Remain" is Sparks and Shyamalan‘s first collaboration, it isn’t the first time the two have attempted to work with one another. In an interview with Variety last month, Sparks revealed that Shyamalan was tapped to write the script for "The Notebook." But “he was busy writing this movie, 'The Sixth Sense.' I don’t know if you’ve heard of that movie. I wonder how that eventually did?,” Sparks said jokingly. While the 2004 film was eventually adapted by screenwriters Jeremy Leven and Jan Sardi, Sparks and Shyamalan closely followed each other’s careers in the years that followed. And after a series of pitches between the two creatives, they settled on a genre-blending concept for Sparks’ 25th novel. Released by Penguin Random House, the book follows New York architect Tate Donovan, who arrives in Cape Cod to design his best friend’s summer home, while hoping to make a fresh start,per the publisher’s description . While Shyamalan and Sparks conceived the idea together, Sparks wrote the novel, and Shyamalan wrote the screenplay for a horror-romance, which is currently set for a fall 2026 release. The film will Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor. The following information is not intended for publication tca dpa coh

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Edward Berger’s "Ballad of a Small Player", starring Colin Farrell as a down-on-his-luck gambler in Macau, arrives with high expectations following the director’s Oscar-winning "All Quiet on the Western Front" and critically acclaimed "Conclave". Los Angeles (tca/dpa) – "Ballad of a Small Player" is director Edward Berger's third movie in four years. The first two, "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Conclave" earned 17 Oscar nominations between them, including best picture nods for both. You'd think that would make "Ballad of a Small Player" something of an event or, at the very least, eagerly anticipated by people who enjoy movies with a straightforward directorial style, keen attention to production and costume design and the kind of booming score that will spike your tinnitus for days after you leave the theater. And those Berger hallmarks are certainly on display in the new one, a drama about a dandy named Lord Doyle, a down-and-out con man and gambling addict on the brink of a breakdown in the kitschy gaming hub of Macau. What's missing, crucially, is a reason for the audience to care about this narcissist, even though Colin Farrell employs every trick in his acting arsenal to win you over. And if Farrell, an actor I'd follow just about anywhere (except perhapsancient Macedonia ), can't make you feel for this guy, you know "Ballad" has problems that are extensive as the good lord's unpaid hotel bill. We first see Doyle, whose title, as you'd probably guess, is self-bequeathed, through a reflection off his stainless steel room service tray. (Mirror images are employed often in the film.) Doyle's opulent Macau hotel suite is in disarray and he isn't in much better shape. But there is work to be done, so he puts on his green velvet suit, his lucky Savile Row gloves and tries to remember where he stashed his one last roll of bills. In a voice-over, Doyle tells us he's a "high roller on a slippery slope." "Here, I barely exist," he continues, calling himself agweilo , a Cantonese term for a foreign ghost cloaked in invisibility. "Here, I can be whoever I want to be." Doyle is clearly delusional. Cloaked in invisibility? This peacock stands out even in Macau, a city that embraces garishness almost as much as it does light pollution. Berger plays the opening section of the film as farce, but then switches the tone, seeming to realize that he doesn't have the facility or interest in heightened comedy. He's more comfortable playing it big and trying to create an operatic drama about a desperate man, consumed by greed and a gnawing hunger that has rotted his soul, looking for one last score. It's a movie we've seen countless times, though not in Macau, and Berger banks on the location to create shiny, stylized images that might distract you from the familiar emptiness of the story. For a moment, it seems Doyle's luck might change when he meets Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a casino employee whose job is to extend lines of credit to addicts like Doyle, enabling them to fall even more deeply into debt. But her heart isn't in her work and for reasons we never buy, she takes pity on Doyle, recognizing in him a "lost soul." "It's never too late to change," she tells him. (Has she seen his hotel room?) "Ballad," written by Rowan Joffé, adapting Lawrence Osborne's vivid 2014 novel, depicts Dao Ming as a fellow ghost, though in her case, the distinction might be quite literal. The movie keeps you guessing on that count, as did the book. There's an additional woman in Doyle's life, Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton ), a guest staying at his hotel who he spies taking his picture for reasons Doyle can only assume aren't good. She's another character with a slippery identity and Swinton, always entertaining, has some fun with her, embracing the movie's over-the-top aesthetic by donning kooky pink eyeglasses and sporting an electroshock hairstyle. With "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Conclave," Berger showed himself to be a canny crowd-pleaser, capable of jumping genres and drawing out fine work from his leads. Here, he seems as lost in the bright lights as Doyle, piling on disorienting camera angles and an overcooked sound design to create an unfocused fever dream about individual excess that exhausts the humanity from its story. It's an overload of overkill, yet as tedious and empty as the last day of a 72-hour trip to Vegas when the novelty has worn off and you just want to go home and sleep. The following information is not intended for publication tca dpa coh

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Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited "Frankenstein" has finally come to life, and critics are hailing it as a visually stunning and deeply personal adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel. Los Angeles (tca/dpa) – "Frankenstein" has haunted Guillermo del Toro since he was a kid who barely reached the Creature's knees. Back in 2011, the writer-director was already tinkering with a version of the monster that resembled a blend of Iggy Pop and Boris Karloff with jagged sutures, gaunt wrinkles and a crushed nose. Since then, Del Toro has made changes. The 2025 model is played by Jacob Elordi, a 6-foot-5 actor often cast as the ideal human specimen in movies like "Saltburn" and who here howls to life with handsome features and rock star swagger. But your eyes keep staring at his pale, smooth seams. He doesn't look hand-stitched — he looks a little like a modern android. Of course he does. The decades have given Del Toro time to think about what truly scares him. It's not monsters. He loves all disfigured nasties, be they swamp creatures, eyeball-less ogres or bolt-headed Hellboys. It's tech bros, like the ones weaseling into Hollywood, who give their every innovation a sterile sheen. "Frankenstein" is the director's lifelong passion project: He doesn't just want to makea"Frankenstein" butthe"Frankenstein," so he's faithfully set his adaptation in the past. But he's adjusted the wiring so that 1850s Europe reminds us of Silicon Valley. The result is the best movie of his career. This Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac ) is a short-sighted egomaniac who barks over his critics while jabbing the air with his fingers. "I fail to see why modesty is considered a virtue," he says with a snort. And Del Toro has written Victor an enabler: a deep-pocketed investor named Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz ) who struts into Victor's science lecture hunting for a whizkid to crack the code to immortality. With his gold-heeled shoes and a confidence that he's too rich to die, Waltz's wealthy arms dealer is a 19th-century take on venture capitalists likeBryan Johnson andPeter Thiel who've been poking into the feasibility of pumping their veins with young blood. "Don't be a reasonable man," Henrich advises Victor. The assumption is — and remains — that tycoons and geniuses deserve to run rampant. Great success demands an indifference to the rules. And if you're wondering whether money or brains has more power, there's a scene in which Henrich uses a chamber pot and smugly orders Victor to "flush that for me." Del Toro is wired into the outrage inMary Shelley's sly 1818 novel, a nightmarish satire about men who care only about yelling "first!" without asking what horrors come next. Centuries ago, she warned of man's ill-considered rush to create artificial intelligence. Today, Dr. Frankenstein's descendants keep promising that AI won't destroy civilization while ignoring Shelley's point, that the inventor is more dangerous than his monster. Victor, a stunted man-child who drinks milk served by a sommelier, is frozen in the I'll-show-him stage of growing up with an abusive father (Charles Dance ) who whipped him when he got a wrong answer on his schoolwork. Victor's name, we're reminded, means "winner," a symbol of the pressure he's under to excel. Isaac plays him with a pitchman's exuberance that sags as the corners of his mouth wrench down in disappointment. He's hacked how to make a disembodied head moan in agony. But having rarely felt affection, Victor doesn't know how to generate that emotion at all. Worse, it hasn't occurred to him to think past the triumph of his product launch, that his Creature can't be readily unplugged. The only kind characters in the movie are a rural blind man (David Bradley ) and the moth-likeMia Goth , double-cast as Victor's mother, Claire, and his brother's fiancee, Elizabeth. A convent girl with a creepy streak, Elizabeth sees beauty in biology, leaning over a corpse's flayed back to appreciate the intricacy of its ventricles. But the more she studies Victor, the less impressed she gets. Because Shelley came up with "Frankenstein" as an 18-year-old newlywed who'd just lost a baby, her message gets boiled down to gender: Women birth life, men mimic it. Really, the feminine strength of the book lies in its foxy, shifting narration that opens with a prologue from an Arctic explorer who's gotten his sailors trapped in the ice, before transitioning to Victor's story and then the Creature's. Like a hostess who secretly loathes her guests, Shelley encourages her characters to flatter themselves and expose their braggadocio. Del Toro has kept that tactic and he's kept the book's structure. But within that framework, he's changed nearly everything else to make Victor more culpable. Unlike the 1931 film, there's no Igor and no excuse of accidentally using the wrong brain. This Victor does his own dirty work and what goes wrong is his fault. Meanwhile, Del Toro amps up the action, starting the film off with a ghastly great sequence in which Elordi's Creature punches a sailor so hard his spine snaps into a backward somersault. "What manner of devil made him?" the Captain (Lars Mikkelsen ) exclaims. Victor guiltily explains why he played God. Being a futurist isn't bad. Henrich, an early adopter of daguerreotype cameras, shoots photographs of women posing with skulls like he's paving the way for Del Toro's whole filmography. But pompous Henrich and Victor don't appreciate that their accomplishments are built on other's sacrifices. When the cinematographerDan Laustsen pans across a battlefield of dead soldiers, it feels like a silent scream. Henrich made his fortune killing these men; now, Victor will salvage their body parts. Del Toro delights in the kinetic gusto of the tale, the grotesquerie of cracking limbs and blood sloshing about Victor's shoes. In the laboratory, dead leaves and buzzing flies whirl through the air as if to keep up with the inventor's wild ambitions andAlexandre Desplat's swirling orchestral score. The production design byTamara Deverell is superb as are the costumes byKate Hawley , who shrouds Goth in dramatic chiffon layers and dresses laced to highlight her vertebrae. (This movie loves bones as much asSir Mix-A-Lot loved backs.) As Victor rudely flings around torsos and limbs, it's clear that he only values life if it's branded with his name. So yes, of course, Elordi's Creature looks good. He's been assembled from the choicest bits of man flesh to show off the talent of his creator, not so different from Steve Jobs caressing samples of brushed aluminum. When Elordi's Creature pleads for a companion, a sliver of sculpted abs peeking out from under five hulking layers of wool and fur, you expect half the audience's hands to shoot up and volunteer. Elordi has adopted one or two of Karloff's mannerisms: the arms outstretched in search of warmth, the lurching walk. You can see that he's a tad lopsided on the left side, presumably because Victor couldn't find matching femurs. Mostly, he's his own monster, neither the calculating serial murderer of the book nor Karloff's reactive, animalistic killer, but a scapegoat who finally starts leveling his foes with bone-breaking efficiency. Towering over Victor by almost a foot, Elordi's Creature dwarfs his creator physically, morally and emotionally. There's anguish in his eyes, and when Del Toro shows us the world through his perspective, humanity itself appears anti-life, a pestilence that destroys without hesitation. There's a pack of digital wolves that just looks silly. Otherwise, you trust how intensely Del Toro has doted upon every detail. I was flummoxed by a row of servants flanking young Victor (Christian Convery ) who appeared to be wearing gauzy bags over their heads. What are those for? My theory is it's a tribute to the veil Karloff sported during lunch breaks, so as not to frighten any pregnant secretaries on the Universal lot. Eschewing mobs of pitchfork-wiel…

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"Mr. Scorsese" on Apple TV+ is a five-part documentary series that offers an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the legendary director Martin Scorsese’s life and career. For fans and newcomers alike, it’s a rich, affectionate and revealing tribute Los Angeles (tca/dpa) – Of the many double-edged gifts bestowed upon us by the streaming service gods, the welter of celebrity documentaries is perhaps the most remarkable. Where once a notable artist or athlete of a certain age might have participated in an authorized biography or extensive magazine feature, now everyone who's anyone is happily excavating their personal archives before plunking down in front of a camera crew and encouraging all their besties to do the same. Michael Jordan , Pamela Anderson , David Beckham , Victoria Beckham , Sylvester Stallone , Steve Martin , Selena Gomez , Jennifer Lopez — the list goes on and on and on. Whether an emotional deep dive, cultural criticism or a portrait of the rich and famous lifestyle, each varies in terms of quality and intention, from documentary journalism to obvious vanity project. Rebecca Miller's series " Mr. Scorsese ," which premieres on Apple TV Friday, falls squarely in the middle of these two things. Anchored by extensive conversations with the director Martin Scorsese , it is a five-hour, five-part contemplation of an extraordinary career and the myriad forces — personal, cultural, spiritual — that drove, and occasionally threatened to derail, it. At times, "Mr. Scorsese" feels like a very long, and notably star-studded, bonus features reel, in which the director and longtime friends and collaborators including Thelma Schoonmaker , Robert De Niro , Nicholas Pileggi , Brian De Palma , Steven Spielberg , Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis discuss the evolution of Scorsese's work and their admiration of it. But the length, depth and fertility of these relationships show just as much as the participants tell and, honestly, who doesn't love a good bonus features reel? Especially when it includes delightful footage of Scorsese hanging out with old friends from the 'hood and historic interviews with his parents, especially one in whichhis mother, Catherine, makes meatballs. The first episode chronicles his early life on the mean streets of New York's Lower East Side . As an asthmatic kid, he was forced to view the world through the windows of his family's apartment — which, he says, explains his love of high-angle shots — and on the screens of the local theaters; as the only air-conditioned buildings to which he had access, they literally saved his life. ("Thank God for the asthma," Spike Lee jokes.) Keenly aware of the violence that roiled around him, as well as the local mob figures that ruled the area, Scorsese found solace in the Catholic Church . He briefly considered becoming a priest, but after being kicked out of preparatory seminary, decided thathis early attempts at cinematic storytelling — films made first from childish drawings and then with the aid of friends — were a better bet. Scorsese's faith, and his battles with it, provide something of a leitmotif of the series — is he a saint or a sinner? Can anyone be one without also being the other? Though at 82, Scorsese presents as an easygoing, wildly engaging éminence grise of cinema, showing up in "The Studio" and making viral TikToks with his youngest daughter, Francesca, he was, in his early career, a wildly ambitious, occasionally violent (breaking phones, hurling desks) and often exhausting collaborator who became a cultural flash point long before he pushed backagainst Marvel movies. Stretching from 1967 until the present day, Scorsese's story provides a timeline of modern American cinema — the rise and fall of independent filmmaking, the historic and now-waning power of critics, the game-changing impact of cinematic violence with "Taxi Driver" and the burgeoning power of the religious right in its reaction to"The Last Temptation of Christ." After the early biographical introduction, the series rolls out as a chronological look at some of Scorsese's most important (although not always successful) films, including and especially "Mean Streets," "Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More," "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," "The King of Comedy," " New York, New York ," "The Age of Innocence," "Gangs of New York ," "Casino" and "The Departed." Scorsese fans will no doubt bemoan what is not covered, especially"Hugo" and all of the director's TV work, but Miller is far more interested in examining the roots of Scorsese's genius rather than celebrating its breadth. Behind-the-scenes anecdotes and insights from Scorsese's longtime collaborators — Schoonmaker, De Niro, Pileggi and, later, DiCaprio — as well as surprising interviews with the aging tough guy who was the inspiration for "Mean Streets'" Johnny Boy and, of course, Mom's meatball-making scene, more than make up for any gaps in the canon. More notable, perhaps, are the gaps in the biography. Miller is an actor, novelist and director whose work includes a 2017 documentary about her father, the playwright Arthur Miller ; she is also married to Day-Lewis. So the collaborative feel of " Mr. Scorsese ," which often tips toward the deferential, is not surprising. Though Miller does not appear in " Mr. Scorsese ," she is occasionally heard during her interviews with Scorsese, though "interviews" may be too strong a term. Scorsese is clearly more than happy to narrate the story of his career, and though once or twice Miller urges him to expand on this thought or the other, he remains very much in control of a narrative that focuses almost entirely on his work. Indeed, one of the series' most powerful moments hits when Domenica Scorsese , his middle daughter, talks about working with her father on "The Age of Innocence," in which she had a small role. "It was a sense of safety," she says, "that, um … it was funny to find it there ." She describes her father as a lighthouse. "If he's working on the film, its right there, he's on the film. Then if you're not there in that sphere of light … you can feel its absence." All three of Scorsese's daughters, each products of separate marriages, are part of " Mr. Scorsese ," and while the elder two acknowledge a father who was often absent and occasionally angry, they speak of him only with fondness and respect. No axes were ground in the making of " Mr. Scorsese ." Nor is Scorsese much interested, as others have been, in using the documentary format as a therapist's couch. He speaks candidly but briefly about the drug abuse that almost killed him in the 1980s, as well as the anger issues and spiritual questions that have long plagued him, but there is little discussion of his domestic life, which includes five marriages, or the relationships he has with each of his daughters. Viewers longing to know more about his private life must settle for subtext — former partner Isabella Rossellini mentions that he used to destroy rooms in their home and was shocked when he saw himself after a friend filmed him doing it — and the films. Miller shows no interest in separating the man from his work because, as "Mr. Scorsese" proves, with this particular man, no separation exists. The following information is not intended for publication tca dpa coh

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Cologne (dpa) – German film director Werner Herzog has more than half a million followers on Instagram — but still doesn't have a smartphone. "My son handles the technical side. I provide him with the content," Herzog told dpa about his widely followed account on the social network. When asked why he does not own a smartphone, Herzog replied: "Look, everything important still reaches me." Occasionally, he borrows a device when necessary — for example, if he needs to be picked up somewhere. Herzog has only been active onInstagram for a few months, but has already amassed 553,000 followers with clips he sends to his son via email. His profile features scenes from his work as a filmmaker, such as moments from podcasts, on the red carpet or related to his new film "Ghost Elephants". It also includes quirky glimpses into other aspects of his life. In one clip, Herzog celebrates with a mariachi band, while in another, he grills a steak. "I think it’s good that I am, so to speak, technically at the forefront of communication," Herzog explained about his decision to join Instagram. He added that he is also deeply engaged with virtual reality and has even taken on a role in an animated film. Herzog emphasised that his lack of a smartphone should not be taken as a statement. "It might seem old-fashioned," he said. "But I myself am not old-fashioned, because I’m right at the forefront and actively shaping things." He speculated that the attention his account receives might be due to its content. "I think I say things with substance," Herzog said. However, he admitted he does not know whether 553,000 followers is a lot. Herzog’s new film "Ghost Elephants" follows a biologist searching for a herd of unique elephants in the remote highlands of Angola. Herzog’s Instagram account also features aclip from the film’s production. It shows several people pulling a giant snake out of a water basin. "While filming GHOST ELEPHANTS in the northern Kalahari desert (Namibia) I felt like cooling off in a well," Herzog recounts. "But there was something lurking in the water…" The following information is not intended for publication dpa idt yynwk n1 gth

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Thomas Pynchon has long been in the running for the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he didn't get it this time either. But fans are nonetheless celebrating, as the US author has now published a new novel – his first in 12 years. New York (dpa) – Very few people are as famous and yet as unknown as Thomas Pynchon, the US author who has millions of fans but is rarely seen in person. He has been tipped for the Nobel Prize for Literature over the decades as one of the most important contemporary English-language writers. Nonetheless, he has managed to take anonymity to extremes rarely seen in these social media-saturated times. Pynchon lives a completely secluded life, gives virtually no interviews, does not attend award ceremonies and certainly permits no photography. Born in 1937 into a New England Puritan family on Long Island near New York, Pynchon is said to have studied physics and literature, served in the Navy and written for a company newspaper. He lives with his wife, a literary agent, on New York's Upper West Side and has a child – though none of this has ever been confirmed by Pynchon himself. Ninth novel, after 12 years What we do know is that Pynchon, said to be 88, published eight novels between 1963 and 2013. They were greatly successful, from "V" and "Gravity's Rainbow" to "Against the Day." Some 12 years on since his most recent novel, his ninth is "Shadow Ticket," released last week. Pynchon's work "always challenges the limits of our perception," says Rowohlt publisher Nicola Bartels. With "Shadow Ticket," Pynchon again shows his unmistakable style and remarkable ability to analyse social issues with a sharp, humorous and profound eye. The work is set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1932, bringing us back to the US in the midst of the Great Depression. Prohibition is about to be repealed. Al Capone is in jail and private detective Hicks McTaggart takes on a routine job, to locate the heiress of a cheese manufacturer and bring her home. But suddenly he finds himself on an ocean liner and ends up in Hungary. By the time Hicks catches up with the woman he is hunting for, he has found himself "entangled with Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, practitioners of the paranormal, outlaw motorcyclists, and the troubles that come with each of them, none of which Hicks is qualified, forget about being paid, to deal with," says publisher Penguin. Pynchon never makes it easy for the reader "Shadow Ticket" is typical Pynchon in many ways. The story twists and turns, with ever-changing minor characters, making for a complex read. He builds entire cathedrals out of language, only to tear them down completely a few pages later. The puzzle is an essential part of the process. "Figuring out what it is like to read Pynchon is what it is like to read Pynchon. You're never done with it," author Jonathan Lethem once told the New York Times. Fans of the writer are busy enjoying his work and in the US, some even gathered at bookshops to be among the first readers at midnight when it was released. They were delighted. But critics had a harder time with "Shadow Ticket." The book has a somewhat hectic feel to it and the unfamiliar language means you have to fight your way through it, sometimes reading passages over and over, which can be rewarding and enjoyable but occasionally frustrating too. "Shadow Ticket" is definitely not a book for Pynchon beginners, but it sure is a feast for fans. The following information is not intended for publication dpa cah xxde arw coh

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