Is your death metal starting to feel a bit lite? Has your existential angst turned from bespoke heavy-duty personal baggage to pint-sized Prada cocktail purse? Is Oprah starting to get you down? Maybe you’ve found yourself reading about Paris Hilton and Taylor Swift more often than you’d like to admit. And even venturing into… self help and chick lit?

You know it’s time. Time to head out from those shallow waters and trudge into darker places. To take on the juggernaut of human cynicism and face The Man. Crank up the angst to a volume you didn’t know existed. Trudge into the sluggish waters of post-industrial Europe, and travel to the bowels of colonial Africa. You will find humankind at the coalface of misery and cruelty. You will find bureaucratic stupidity at its most extreme depths of compulsive depravity. Sail into the unbearable heaviness of being.

Read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Your journey awaits.