Non-Fiction

How does a society innovate when resources are scarce? In Chinese Media Improvisations: Thriving on Deficits, scholar Xuenan Cao offers a fresh perspective on China’s technological development, examining how shortages, political pressures, and material constraints have shaped the country’s media and technological imagination. Moving across several periods of Chinese history, Cao explores the printing shortages of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, the challenges of modernising China’s railway infrastructure, early experiments in information theory when computers were unavailable, and contemporary attempts to incorporate artificial intelligence into urban life. These seemingly disparate episodes reveal a recurring pattern: people adapt existing tools, improvise unconventional solutions, and transform limitations into opportunities for experimentation. Drawing on archival documents, newspapers, scientific publications, and literary works, Cao combines historical research with media theory to challenge assumptions about technological progress that originate in Western scholarship. The result is an interdisciplinary study of creativity, scarcity, and innovation that illuminates how China’s distinctive historical and political circumstances have shaped its relationship with technology.

In this powerful memoir, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil recounts his detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March 2025 and the fight against his threatened deportation. A Columbia University graduate student and legal permanent resident, Khalil became a prominent voice in student protests against the war in Gaza. His arrest separated him from his pregnant wife and home in New York, transporting him to a detention facility in Louisiana, where he faced uncertainty about his future and the possibility of being forcibly removed from the country. Drawing on the diary he kept during his imprisonment, Khalil describes the psychological toll of detention, the precarious lives of fellow detainees, and the unexpected solidarity that develops among people deprived of their freedom. He also traces his family’s history of displacement—from Palestine to a refugee camp in Syria—and his own journey through Lebanon to the United States. Combining personal testimony with political reflection, this memoir examines exile, belonging, and the consequences of speaking out against injustice. It asks what freedom and security truly mean when a person’s right to remain at home can be challenged for exercising their right to protest.

In this darkly humorous and deeply personal memoir, Katya Suvorova recounts her childhood as an undocumented Russian immigrant in Houston, Texas, after her mother brought her to the United States in search of a better life. Arriving at just three years old, Katya grows up amid instability, poverty, and a succession of her mother’s husbands. Instead of experiencing a carefree childhood, she learns to navigate a world of uncertainty while taking on responsibilities far beyond her age, including caring for her younger sister. At seventeen, Katya discovers her mother’s advertisement in a mail-order bride catalogue from the 1990s, prompting her to reconsider her family’s history and the sacrifices behind their immigration. As she grows older, she confronts painful questions about motherhood, obligation, and whether a child’s future must be repayment for a parent’s sacrifices. Combining sharp humour with an unflinching account of family trauma, Suvorova explores immigration, generational conflict, and the complicated relationship between gratitude and personal freedom.

Until the Last Gun Is Silent examines the role of Black Americans in the Vietnam War and the movement to bring the conflict to an end. Historian Matthew F. Delmont traces the experiences of Black servicemen, veterans, activists, and peace protesters who confronted both the violence of war abroad and racial injustice at home. Their stories reveal the contradictions of fighting for democracy overseas while experiencing discrimination within the United States. The book also explores how Black communities challenged official narratives about military service, patriotism, and the purpose of the war. By connecting battlefield experiences with political activism and the struggle for civil rights, Delmont presents a broader account of the forces that helped end American involvement in Vietnam and reshape debates about citizenship, equality, and national responsibility.

In this memoir, Lana Estemirova reflects on growing up in Chechnya during the wars between Russia and Chechnya, and on the profound influence of her mother, human rights activist Natalia Estemirova. Through personal memories, family history, and the realities of life under violence and repression, she recounts how conflict shaped her childhood and her understanding of courage, justice, and survival. In 2009, Natalia was abducted and murdered after years of documenting human rights abuses. Her death became a defining rupture in Lana’s life, leaving behind grief as well as a responsibility to preserve her mother’s legacy. Please Live is both an intimate coming-of-age story and a testimony to the human cost of war, political violence, and the struggle to speak the truth.

What remains of an empire long after its subjects have scattered across the world? In this illuminating work of historical research, Julia Stephens traces the lives of Indian migrants who travelled across the British Empire, uncovering the intimate stories hidden in colonial records, family photographs, heirlooms, and forgotten archives. From the Indian Ocean to Malaya, Zanzibar, South Africa, and beyond, she follows generations of families whose experiences challenge conventional narratives of migration and belonging. Combining archival discoveries with interviews and contemporary family histories, Stephens reveals how colonialism continues to shape identity, memory, and the ways descendants understand their past. A compelling exploration of the human stories behind empire, Worldly Afterlives reimagines history through the lives of those too often left out of its official records.

How did Russia move from presenting itself as a pioneer of women’s emancipation to embracing conservative values and authoritarian rule? In Motherland, journalist Julia Ioffe explores modern Russian history through the lives of the women who experienced, shaped, and survived its transformations. Combining historical research, personal memoir, and investigative journalism, Ioffe traces a century of upheaval, from the revolutionary promises of early Soviet feminism to the hardships of the Second World War and the contradictions of contemporary Russian society. She brings together the stories of her own Jewish-Russian family, feminist revolutionaries, women who fought on the front lines, single mothers who rebuilt their lives after the war, and modern activists challenging political repression. Rather than telling Russia’s story solely through its male rulers, Ioffe places women’s experiences at the centre of the national narrative. She examines how political ideals shaped women’s opportunities, how successive generations carried the burdens of social change, and how the failure of emancipatory promises contributed to the rise of modern authoritarianism. A finalist for the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Motherland offers a compelling exploration of feminism, power, historical memory, and the complicated relationship between personal lives and national identity.

In You Can’t Please All, Tariq Ali reflects on more than four decades of political activism, intellectual debate, and cultural life, continuing the story begun in his earlier memoir, Street Fighting Years. Moving between continents and pivotal historical moments, Ali recounts witnessing the collapse of the Soviet Union, meeting political figures such as Hugo Chávez, and campaigning against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a prominent critic of Western foreign policy. Combining personal recollections, political commentary, anecdotes, and reflections on literature, theatre, and film, the memoir also offers intimate portraits of influential writers, activists, and friends, including Edward Said and Benazir Bhutto. Ali explores the relationship between personal convictions and public life, tracing the changing fortunes of the political left from the aftermath of the revolutionary movements of the 1960s to the conflicts and ideological struggles of the twenty-first century. The book also looks back at his family’s experiences in the early years of Pakistan, connecting his personal history with the broader political forces that shaped his life.

When Mako Yoshikawa learns that her estranged father has died on the eve of her wedding, she is overwhelmed by grief, guilt, and unanswered questions. Shoichi Yoshikawa was a brilliant Japanese physicist and nuclear fusion researcher whose life was marked by extraordinary intellectual ambition, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and episodes of violence toward his family. Although Mako loved him, she eventually cut him out of her life, unable to reconcile his brilliance and generosity with the pain he caused. After his death, she begins investigating his past, exploring his childhood in prewar Japan, his experiences as an immigrant in America, and the secrets that shaped his identity. Through personal memories, family stories, and historical research, she confronts the complicated relationship between mental illness and responsibility, love and abuse, and the desire to understand someone who has caused profound harm. Intimate and deeply reflective, Secrets of the Sun is a memoir about family trauma, cultural displacement, and the difficult search for understanding when reconciliation is no longer possible.

Raised by ambitious Korean immigrant parents in Texas, Hyeseung Song grows up believing that achievement is the price of acceptance. She earns her place at an Ivy League university, striving to embody the model minority ideal while struggling with depression, family expectations, and a fractured sense of belonging. But when academic success and parental approval can no longer sustain her, she faces a painful reckoning with the life she has been taught to pursue. Through mental illness, a psychiatric hospitalization, and her eventual embrace of painting, Song begins to reclaim her identity beyond the expectations imposed on her. Docile is an unflinching memoir about the cost of perfection, the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, and the courage to build a life that feels authentically one’s own.

What did feminism mean to our mothers—and how does their understanding of womanhood shape the lives of their daughters? In this moving collection of essays, women from Pakistan reflect on their mothers’ experiences of marriage, motherhood, tradition, resistance, and independence. Some mothers marched for women’s emancipation in the 1980s; others challenged social expectations through quieter, everyday acts of self-determination. Their daughters inherit both the freedoms they fought for and the limitations they could not escape. Exploring the tensions between generations, cultural expectations, and evolving ideas of feminism, this collection offers a nuanced portrait of Pakistani women’s lives and the complicated love that binds mothers and daughters.

Can a woman nurture both her children and her creative ambitions without sacrificing part of herself? Blending memoir, biography, and art criticism, Catherine Ricketts explores the complicated relationship between motherhood and artistic expression. Through her own experiences and the lives of remarkable women—including Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, Ruth Asawa, and Alice Neel—she examines how pregnancy, caregiving, grief, and domestic responsibilities shape the creative process. Thoughtful and deeply compassionate, this book challenges the idea that motherhood and ambition must compete, celebrating the women who continue to create despite the limitations imposed on their time, bodies, and freedom.