Non-Fiction

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.

After losing her father to political violence as a teenager, Fatima Bhutto grows up longing for the security and happiness of a family of her own. Years later, she falls in love with a charismatic man who seems to offer everything she has dreamed of. But what begins as an intoxicating romance gradually becomes a decade-long relationship marked by manipulation, emotional cruelty, and control. As her world narrows, Bhutto begins to question her own judgment and the future she has spent years waiting for. During the isolation of the 2020 pandemic, she retreats to the English countryside with her fiercely loyal Jack Russell terrier, Coco. Through the companionship of her dog, the restorative power of nature, and reflections on literature, mythology, art, and astronomy, she begins to find the courage to reclaim her life. Intimate and unflinching, The Hour of the Wolf is a memoir about grief, coercive relationships, loneliness, and the unexpected forms of love that help us find our way back to ourselves.

In Cork, Ireland, a derelict Victorian psychiatric hospital is being transformed into modern apartments. For one woman, known as the Reader, the abandoned building becomes the beginning of an extraordinary investigation into the lives of the women who once lived behind its walls. Through archival records and the casebooks of Dr Lucia Strangman, one of Ireland’s earliest female asylum doctors, she discovers the stories of women whose suffering was recorded, interpreted, and too often misunderstood by the medical establishment. As the Reader becomes increasingly immersed in their histories, the boundaries between past and present, personal experience and historical memory begin to blur. Blending biography, memoir, historical research, and elements of the ghost story, Said the Dead gives imaginative life to forgotten women while examining grief, mental illness, motherhood, and the ethics of recovering voices that history has silenced.

What would the world look like if women made the rules? BBC correspondent Megha Mohan travels across continents to discover communities where women create their own systems of power, belonging, and survival. From South Korea’s controversial feminist online movements to women’s communal living spaces in Europe and the Rain Queens of South Africa, she uncovers stories that challenge conventional ideas about leadership, family, and social order. Inspired by her own great-grandmother’s matrilineal community in South India, Mohan combines historical research with firsthand reporting to explore how women have built alternative ways of living, often outside patriarchal structures. Herlands is an illuminating investigation into women’s solidarity, collective power, and the possibilities of reimagining society.

Motherhood has shaped human history, yet the women who have raised children, challenged injustice, and fought for reproductive freedom have often been written out of it. From ancient childbirth rituals to the struggles of unmarried mothers in seventeenth-century England, Elinor Cleghorn traces the lives of women who resisted society’s attempts to control their bodies and define their roles. Through the stories of midwives, writers, activists, and community leaders, she reveals how mothering has always been an act of labour, resistance, and transformation. Reclaiming motherhood as more than a biological function or private responsibility, this compelling history challenges the patriarchal systems that have devalued women’s work and asks what it would mean to finally recognize and support the people who care for others.

In 1963, Ada Ferrer’s mother fled Cuba with her infant daughter, leaving behind her nine-year-old son, Poly. What began as a desperate family decision became a separation that shaped generations. Decades later, Ferrer draws on letters, family memories, and historical archives to reconstruct the lives of those who left and those who stayed. Tracing her family’s story through the Cuban Revolution, migration, and the legacy of slavery, she explores how political upheaval enters the most intimate corners of family life. Both a personal reckoning and a powerful work of history, this moving memoir examines the enduring bonds of kinship, the meaning of home, and the stories we inherit.

What does it mean to belong when your identity crosses borders, cultures, and histories? Drawing on her own journey from Tanzania to Botswana and the United States, Gayatri Sethi challenges conventional ideas about nationality, race, ethnicity, and belonging. Blending personal reflections, poetry, academic insights, and interactive exercises, she explores how colonialism, racism, immigration, and inherited cultural expectations shape the ways people understand themselves and others. Moving beyond individual identity, Sethi asks how people from different backgrounds can build meaningful solidarities without erasing their differences. Thought-provoking and deeply personal, this book invites readers to question the boundaries that divide us and imagine a more inclusive vision of collective liberation.

Asian American mothers are often reduced to a familiar stereotype: strict, demanding parents obsessed with their children’s academic success. In Not Tiger Moms, sociologist Miliann Kang challenges this narrow narrative, revealing how racism and xenophobia shape perceptions of Asian American motherhood. Drawing on candid interviews with mothers born or raised primarily in the United States, Kang explores the pressures they face as they navigate parenting, cultural identity, education, work, and belonging. Their stories reveal lives far more complex than the stereotypes allow, exposing the contradictions between being seen as a model minority and being treated as perpetual outsiders. Thoughtful and illuminating, this book reimagines motherhood beyond racial expectations and asks how society might better support mothers in all their diversity.

What does it mean to belong to a homeland you may never fully know? In this moving collection of essays, Palestinian-American writer Zaina Arafat explores the complexities of diaspora, inherited memory, and the longing for home. Moving between Nablus, Amman, the Appalachian Mountains, and Manhattan, she weaves together her family’s history, her experiences of identity and motherhood, and the pain of watching Palestine from afar. With tenderness, anger, and sharp insight, Arafat examines what it means to preserve a culture across generations while confronting displacement, erasure, and the shifting meaning of belonging. Our Arab is both an intimate family portrait and a powerful meditation on what it means to be Palestinian today.

What if women could reclaim their freedom simply by telling their own stories? First published in 1975, Hélène Cixous’s Medusa’s Laugh is a landmark of feminist thought that challenges the patriarchal traditions shaping literature, language, and society. Drawing on the myth of Medusa, a woman transformed into a monster by the stories told about her, Cixous invites women to reject the identities imposed on them and rediscover their own voices. She introduces the concept of écriture féminine—a form of writing that breaks away from conventional, male-dominated structures and embraces the complexity of women’s bodies, desires, and experiences. Passionate, poetic, and deliberately provocative, this essay is both a literary manifesto and a call to action: women must write themselves into history rather than allow others to define them. Its central message remains powerful: self-expression can be an act of liberation.

Often overlooked in accounts of world history, Turkmenistan occupies a remarkable position at the crossroads of civilisations, empires, and religions. In Mother of the World, Olivier Hein brings this fascinating Central Asian country into focus, revealing how its desert landscapes and ancient cities have shaped events far beyond its borders. From the archaeological mysteries of early civilisations to the flourishing Silk Road metropolis of Merv, once among the world’s greatest centres of learning, Hein traces the region’s transformation through centuries of conquest, cultural exchange, and political upheaval. He explores the rise of the Turkmen people, the devastating Mongol invasions, the expansion of the Russian Empire, and the country’s incorporation into the Soviet Union before its emergence as an independent state in 1991. Drawing on historical research and his own experience as a diplomat stationed in Turkmenistan, Hein challenges the perception of the country as an isolated and marginal place. The result is an engaging portrait of a nation whose extraordinary past reveals the interconnectedness of human civilisation.