In many different parts of the world wars are fought by men and women and, unfortunately, sometimes with children as well. Usually led into guerrilla regiments out of abject desperation or because they were captured, these children are commanded to commit the most heinous of acts. They kill, they loot, and, in the meantime, they […] More »

When civil war between representatives of south Sudan and the government — or north Sudan — erupted in the early 80s, the debris took the form of mass displacement, thousands upon thousands of southern Sudanese leaving their villages that had been ravaged by government-financed militia. Among the unhappy travellers were newly orphaned young males, the […] More »

Ian Brown’s The Boy in the Moon had already achieved a mythic status long before it was ever ready for public eyes. It was this insiders’ rumour, the much anticipated, nagging project that was going to blow away everything the Globe and Mail feature writer had ever written previously.  As far back as 2007, the […] More »

Above I’ve embedded a video made by Scott Thomas, design director of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential run, stumping for a book he’s working on called Designing Obama. And in classic Barack-the-vote style, he’s relying on a web-savvy, crowd-sourced, grassroots internet campaign to get it off the ground, requiring readers to collectively pledge the US$65,000 it […] More »

CanLit has the literary equivalent of the Y2K bug—it can’t flip over into this century When he delivers public lectures, editor and writer John Metcalf is fond of illustrating CanLit’s paradoxical obsession with tales of the rural past by describing the query letter he once received from a then-unheard-of Russell Smith. Metcalf claims that Smith […] More »

In choosing Veronica over Betty, Archie Andrews overturns 70 years’ worth of cultural expectations “Just a matter of skill, that’s all!” Archie Andrews’ first words (said as he stood precariously atop his bike) may have seemed spontaneous in 1941, but 70 years have imbued the line with more weight than a supersized chocolate malt. The […] More »

Until 1999, Nigeria was a land of military rule, repression, and instability. Helon Habila’s novel, Waiting for an Angel, evokes the mental and social climate of the country during the military’s last few years of power in the late 90s. Matching the chaos that rapid changes of power — mainly by military coups — must […] More »

The story of Africans being brought to the Americas, mainly in bondage, is well known. The transatlantic slave trade has been exhaustively mined and narrated and, if the plot is misunderstood, one only needs to peruse the history books for clarity. We know relatively little, though, about African-Americans and their voyages back to the other […] More »

[Editor’s note: If you’re curious, This Magazine has its own Tumblr blog. Visit quote.this.org] I have never left a cinema with as big a grin on my face as when I watched the spectacularly awful Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Every complaint I had heard was spot-on—that the acting was abysmal, the plot incomprehensible, the […] More »

Alice Munro, one of the giants of Canada’s literary scene, has always been a tremendously sensitive and humane writer; in turning down yet another nomination for the prestigious Giller Prize, she’s proven to be an equally sensitive and humane cultivator of Canadian writing talent. Having already won the Giller twice—for The Love of a Good […] More »

I met you in a hostel in Rennes. The weather was humid and this made the door stick: I threw my weight against it and fell into the room. Your pink sandals and your pack were lying in a corner and you were there, too: asleep. Eyes turned toward the window. I had to walk […] More »