International Women’s Day reading list

‘They should do something,’ I groaned. Then a frightening prospect — they might be me! What the hell could I do?

In July 2016, inner-city resident Judy Ryan found a young man — one of ‘her regulars’ — slumped and quiet at her gate. He had overdosed from heroin. Fortunately, that man lived. But Judy had reached breaking point. After four years in a ‘war zone’, where children might encounter a body on the streets, enough was enough.

Knowing little about what she was getting into, but fired with resolve, Judy launched a grassroots campaign against apathy and prejudice. While the residents fought for their neighbourhood and for the right of those suffering from addiction to be treated with the needed care and respect, they would see three coroners’ reports, two elections, a private member’s bill, the police finally acknowledging that arresting their way out of the problem didn’t work, and more unnecessary deaths before the trial of a safe injecting facility was legislated.

A story of drugs, addiction, and a health crisis that touches people from all walks of life, You Talk, We Die is also a highly personal yet practical account of how an authentic local voice and an inclusive campaign can change the minds of business and political leaders to improve the lives of everyone in a community.

The deeply moving memoir of an award-winning war correspondent turned activist — and her rousing defence of human rights in times of resurgent authoritarianism.

As a broadcast journalist for Sky News and Al Jazeera, Sherine Tadros was trained to tell only the facts, as dispassionately as possible. But how can you remain neutral when reporting from war zones, or witnessing brutal state repression?

For twenty-six years, Tadros grew up in the quiet surroundings of her family’s London home, and yet injustice was something her Egyptian immigrant parents could never shelter her from. From her first journalistic assignment trapped inside a war zone in the Gaza Strip, to covering the Arab uprisings that changed the course of history, Tadros searched for ways to make a difference in people’s lives. But it wasn’t until her fiancé left her on their wedding day, and her life fell apart, that she found the courage to find her true purpose. It was the beginning of a journey leading to her current work for Amnesty International at the United Nations, where she lobbies governments to ensure that human rights are protected around the world.

With the compassion and verve of a clear-sighted campaigner and a natural storyteller, Tadros shares her remarkable journey from witnessing injustice to fighting it head-on in the corridors of power.

The fascinating story of the feisty French archaeologist who led the international effort to save ancient Egyptian temples from the floodwaters of the Aswan Dam.

In the 1960s, the world’s attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time: fifty countries contributed nearly a billion dollars to save a dozen ancient Egyptian temples from drowning in the floodwaters of the gigantic new Aswan High Dam. But the massive press coverage of this unprecedented rescue effort completely overlooked the gutsy French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples would now be at the bottom of a gigantic reservoir. It was a project of unimaginable size and complexity that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on higher ground.

Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. As a brave member of the French Resistance in World War II, she had survived imprisonment by the Nazis; in her fight to save the temples, she had to face down two of the most daunting leaders of the postwar world, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and French president Charles de Gaulle.

After a century and a half of Western plunder of Egypt’s ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt helped preserve a crucial part of its cultural heritage, and, just as importantly, made sure it remained in its homeland.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE AND WINNER OF A PEN/HEIM TRANSLATION GRANT.

A woman is haunted by her own bodily waste. A pregnant woman is told she must find a father for her unborn baby or face horrific consequences. A young monster, forced to fight, discovers the extent of his power.

This genre-defying collection of short stories blurs the lines between magical realism, horror, and science fiction. Using elements of the fantastic and surreal, Chung exposes the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society, gliding effortlessly from terrifying to wryly humorous in a skilful translation by the acclaimed Anton Hur.

An electrifying descent from loneliness and grief into obsessive, all-consuming love, by an Italian literary star.

‘When Xu bites me, when she has me in her teeth, naked and bad on top of me, everything is good.’

In a skyscraper apartment overlooking Shanghai’s blue-tinged, pulsating nightlife and filled with rotting food, two women swallow little yellow pills that will make all things dangerous feel safe. They’re both running from a turbulent past.

In abandoned factories and dilapidated slaughterhouses, Xu pushes Ruben to extremes of pleasure and pain that she has never experienced before, to a place where language breaks down and passion becomes consumption.

Blue Hunger asks how we create our identities and how we escape them; it is a fever-dream of a novel, visionary and uncanny, that demolishes all taboos and wisely explores, in a wildly imaginative language, the twisted peaks of loss and desire.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them?

This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple What I’d Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely.

In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.

A groundbreaking book that will expand your thinking, whether you are a trauma survivor, a clinician, someone who loves a survivor, or someone seeking to understand abuse.

In Reclaim, expert forensic and clinical psychologist Dr Ahona Guha explores complex traumas, how survivors can recover and heal, and the nature of those who abuse. She shines a light on the ‘difficult’ trauma victims that society often ignores, and tackles vital questions that plague us: ‘Why are psychological abuse and coercive control so difficult to spot?’, ‘What kinds of behaviours should we see as red flags?’, and ‘Why do some people harm others, and how do we protect ourselves from them?’

In her forensic work, Dr Guha has had extensive experience with those who perpetrate harm, and she has a deep understanding of the psychological and social factors that cause people to abuse, bully, and harass others. In turn, her clinical work has led her to recognise the impacts of complex trauma, and the way our systems fail those who have been victimised. By emphasising compassion above all else, Dr Guha gives a call to action: one that will help us reclaim a safer, healthier society for everyone.

In this gripping debut, a young Cree woman’s dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community, and the land they call home.

When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.

Night after night, Mackenzie’s dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too — crows stalk her every move around the city; she gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina — Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.

Travelling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams — and make them more dangerous.

What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina’s death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside her?

‘Epic … Mukherjee allows full life for these characters who are often real enough to remind us of ourselves, even as they betray one another … even as they betray themselves. This is a lovely debut.’
—Jericho Brown, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Tradition

After living in the US for years, Maneka Roy returns home to India to mourn the loss of her mother and finds herself in a new world. The booming city of Hrishipur where her father now lives is nothing like the part of the country where she grew up, and the more she sees of this new, sparkling city, the more she learns that nothing — and no one — here is as it appears. Ultimately, it will take an unexpected tragic event for Maneka and those around her to finally understand just how fragile life is in this city built on aspirations.

Written from the perspectives of ten different characters, Oindrila Mukherjee’s incisive debut novel explores class divisions, gender roles, and stories of survival within a society that is constantly changing and becoming increasingly Americanised. It’s a story about India today, and people impacted by globalisation everywhere: a tale of ambition, longing, and bitter loss that asks what it really costs to try and build a dream.