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1
Matrescence
Becoming a mother changes you in ways that are far deeper than most people ever explain. But what if this transformation were understood not simply as a life event, but as a profound biological, psychological, and social metamorphosis?
In Matrescence, journalist Lucy Jones explores the extraordinary transition into motherhood, drawing parallels with adolescence. Through neuroscience, evolutionary biology, psychology, and sociology, she investigates how pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood reshape the brain, body, emotions, and sense of identity.
Blending scientific research with her own experiences of motherhood, Jones challenges the idealised image of maternal bliss. She examines exhaustion, ambivalence, identity loss, and the immense pressures placed on mothers by a society that often undervalues caregiving while expecting women to do it all.
Both deeply personal and scientifically informed, Matrescence offers a new language for understanding the transformation of becoming a parent. It asks why such a universal experience has been so overlooked—and what might change if motherhood were better understood, supported, and valued. The book was longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
United Kingdom
2023
2
Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden
Born into a prominent family in southern China, sisters Jun and Hong grow up inseparable in the 1930s, surrounded by the traditions and privileges of a world on the brink of transformation. But when the Chinese Civil War ends in 1949, fate divides them between two rival political systems. Jun settles in Taiwan, marries a Nationalist general, and builds a successful business, while Hong remains on the mainland, where her family’s political background makes her vulnerable to suspicion and persecution. Despite decades of separation and silence, both women forge remarkable lives under vastly different circumstances. Drawing on family memories and historical research, Zhuqing Li tells a deeply personal story of sisterhood, resilience, and the ways political upheaval reshapes families and identities.
China
Taiwan
2023
3
How To Say Babylon
How to Say Babylon is a memoir by Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair about growing up in a strict Rastafari household, where religious beliefs shaped nearly every aspect of family life. Her father, a devoted Rastafari, raises his children according to rigid interpretations of the faith, imposing strict rules on their behaviour, education, appearance, and relationships with the outside world. For Sinclair, these restrictions become particularly difficult as she grows older and begins to question the expectations placed on women.
Books and poetry gradually offer her a way to explore ideas beyond the boundaries of her upbringing. Through education and writing, she discovers the language to challenge the beliefs that have defined her childhood and to develop an independent sense of self. Yet her journey toward freedom is complicated by love for her family and the cultural traditions she does not wish simply to reject.
Written in lyrical prose, the memoir explores religion, patriarchy, colonial history, and the transformative power of literature. It is a deeply personal account of finding one’s voice while negotiating the complex relationship between family, cultural inheritance, and individual freedom.
Jamaica
2023
4
I Love Russia
I Love Russia brings together investigative reporting and personal essays to portray a country through the lives of people often excluded from its official narrative. Journalist Elena Kostyuchenko writes about sex workers, LGBTQ+ people, residents of neglected institutions, and communities affected by violence and political repression. Her reporting also follows the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, examining the human realities behind state propaganda and military aggression. Rather than presenting Russia as a single, uniform society, Kostyuchenko reveals its contradictions through the experiences of individuals whose stories challenge dominant political narratives. The book explores the complicated relationship between love for one’s country and the responsibility to criticise its government, presenting journalism as an act of witnessing, resistance, and moral commitment.
Russia
2023
5
What Have You Left Behind?
What Have You Left Behind? documents the experiences of ordinary Yemenis whose lives have been devastated by the country’s civil war. Writer and journalist Bushra al-Maqtari travelled across Yemen to collect testimonies from civilians affected by violence, displacement, and the destruction of their communities. Rather than focusing on political leaders or military strategy, the book gives space to individuals who have lost family members, homes, livelihoods, and any sense of security. Their accounts reveal the intimate consequences of a conflict often reduced to statistics and geopolitical analysis. By bringing together voices from different parts of the war’s divided landscape, al-Maqtari exposes the human suffering behind competing political narratives. The book explores grief, survival, and the struggle to preserve dignity amid devastation, serving as a powerful record of civilian experiences and a challenge to the international indifference that allows such suffering to continue.
Yemen
2023
6
Free
Free is Lea Ypi’s memoir of growing up in Albania during the final years of communist rule and the turbulent transition that followed. As a child, Ypi believes that her country represents a just and orderly society, interpreting its rules through the limited understanding of childhood. When the communist regime collapses, she begins to discover that the official stories she learned at school concealed a far more complicated reality. Her family history also challenges her assumptions about freedom, revealing how political ideologies and historical circumstances shaped the lives of previous generations. Moving between childhood memories and adult reflection, Ypi examines the meaning of liberty, the relationship between individual choices and political systems, and the difficulty of understanding the past without simplifying it. The memoir offers a nuanced exploration of how people reconstruct their identities when the foundations of their beliefs suddenly disappear.
Albania
2023
7
You Can’t Please All
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.
Pakistan
United Kingdom
2024
8
Secrets of the Sun: A Memoir
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.
Japan
2024
9
Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl
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.
United States
2024
10
The Feminisms Of Our Mothers
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.
Pakistan
2024
11
The Mother Artist: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity
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.
United States
2024
12
Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative
Who gets to tell a people’s story—and what happens when the world refuses to listen? In this powerful essay, Isabella Hammad examines how narratives shape our understanding of Palestine, political violence, and the struggle for freedom. Drawing on the work of Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, she explores how literature can challenge dominant perspectives, complicate simplistic political narratives, and make space for experiences that are too often overlooked. The book brings together Hammad’s 2023 Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University and a subsequent afterword written in early 2024, reflecting on the war in Gaza and the urgent struggle over how it is represented. A thoughtful meditation on storytelling, power, and moral responsibility, it asks readers to reconsider not only the stories they hear, but also the voices they may have learned not to recognize.
Palestine
2024