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Annie Proulx wrote, in The Shipping News: "You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music". In this series of Radio 3's The Essay authors meditate on a piece of music that has formed the back-drop to their craft. In five intimate radio essays they explore how pieces inspire creativity through mood, narrative or structure, inviting us to step into the music – and the author’s – inner world.

Earlier this year, Preti Taneja’s first novel We That Are Young, a re-imagining of King Lear set in contemporary India, won the Desmond Elliot prize. In this emotional radio essay she mediates on the awe-inspiring power of a Sufi devotional song by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: Yaad-E-Nabi Ka Gulshan Mekha.

Producer, Miranda Hinkley.
Executive Producer, Peggy Sutton.
A Somethin' Else production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 3.