There are novels that tell stories, and novels that feel like you’ve stepped into a dream someone else forgot to finish. Pedro Páramo is the latter. Published in 1955 by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo, it’s a short book at barely 120 pages but it unfolds like a long hallucination. The sentences are dry as…
Classical music can sometimes feel untouchable, like marble busts in a museum or scores hidden away in archives. But what makes it pulse with life isn’t just the notes on the page, it’s the people who carried them into the world. Many of the composers, conductors, pianists, singers, etc. lived fascinating lives. And thankfully, some…
Hazy, warm, and surreal. Folk music that wandered into a dream. Psychedelic folk is what happens when artists take acoustic guitars into the woods and return with something slightly enchanted. Gentle strings, surreal lyrics, drifting atmospheres. What is psychedelic folk? A fusion of traditional folk instrumentation with psychedelic textures, dreamy production, and mind-bending imagery. Who…
Nigerian literature has always carried a kind of gravitational pull. It speaks across generations, languages, and continents in a tradition both fiercely local and globally resonant. When you think about the novels that have defined (and continue to define) Nigerian writing, certain names echo immediately: Achebe, Soyinka, Adichie. But part of the joy in tracing…
One of the things that makes Lady Gaga such a magnetic artist is that she’s more shapeshifter than straight pop star. She pulls threads from art, fashion, rock, and jazz, weaving them into a body of work that feels both outrageous and deeply sincere. If you’ve ever listened to Gaga and thought, I love this,…
Introduction: Beyond the Canon The story of 20th-century literature is often told in a familiar key — Joyce and Kafka, Hemingway and Faulkner, Woolf and Eliot. The “canon” leans heavily on a handful of big names, mostly male, and mostly repeating the same narrative of innovation and genius. But outside that spotlight, a whole other…
Some artists spend their lives chasing joy. Leonard Cohen and Anna Akhmatova were not those artists. Both wrote about love with startling directness, but for them, love always carried a shadow. Desire came with betrayal, memory blurred into mourning, and intimacy was haunted by history. It might sound odd to pair a 20th-century Canadian songwriter…
Margaret Atwood has been called many things: prophet, provocateur, master of the speculative, defender of the literary, and one of Canada’s greatest living writers. She’s also written so many novels across so many decades that trying to rank them feels a bit like being asked to choose your favorite element on the periodic table. (Sorry,…
Introduction – The Canon Isn’t What It Used to Be When I first started taking music seriously, I thought there was a holy book of “the classics”. You didn’t need to read it, you could just walk into any record store and see it displayed in the racks. Sgt. Pepper. Blue. Kind of Blue. Nevermind….
Introduction: Stepping Into the Streets of Victorian London Few settings in literature feel as vivid and alive as Victorian London. It was a city of contradictions: glittering wealth beside grinding poverty, reform movements alongside corruption, innovation paired with exploitation. Gas lamps lit the foggy streets, while horse-drawn carriages jostled past barefoot children. For writers of…