This page brings together books by women writers that I have read and reviewed on Books Poetry and More. The list includes fiction, memoirs, reportage, history, public health, social commentary, translated literature, and literary fiction from India and around the world.
These books explore many different subjects — caste, labour, migration, identity, loneliness, politics, gender, illness, memory, and everyday life. Some are deeply personal, some are political, and some are quiet literary works, but each of them adds something important to the way we understand society, literature, and human experience.
The books below are linked to individual reviews. You can browse them as a reading list or use the page to discover authors and subjects you may want to explore further.
Books by Women Writers
Browse reviews of books written by women authors, including fiction, memoirs, reportage, history, public health, caste, politics, and literary fiction.
Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional is a quiet, reflective novel about a middle-aged woman who leaves Sydney, returns to her childhood town, and lives in
Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women exposes how gender data bias shapes everyday life, from healthcare and workplaces to transport, technology, public policy, and design.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny explores loneliness, relationships, family dynamics, and literary realism across India and America, along with thoughts on pacing, class, and
Vidya Krishnan’s Phantom Plague traces the history and present crisis of tuberculosis, showing how stigma, poverty, drug resistance, pharma patents, and public-health failure continue to
Audrey Truschke’s India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent offers a broad overview of Indian history, political myths, social reform, caste, women, and historical
Jyoti Yadav’s Faith and Fury documents the human cost of Covid in India’s villages and small towns, focusing on migrant workers, rural distress, state failure,
Forensics – What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime by Val McDermid is a fascinating exploration of the science behind criminal
Romila Thapar’s Somanatha – The Many Voices of History dismantles the popular myths surrounding the Somnath temple, showing how medieval chronicles, colonial historians, and modern
The Vegetarian by Han Kang—an unsettling novel about patriarchy, silence, and the cost of saying no.
Anita Anand’s Sophia tells the remarkable story of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh, and her journey from royal exile to suffragette
Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger explores identity, social media, conspiracy theories, political distortion, digital selves, and the unsettling mirror world of modern life.
Han Kang’s Greek Lessons is a quiet, unsettling novel about silence, language, loss, memory, and the fragile ways human beings try to reach one another.
Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me is a memoir about her mother Mary Roy, their complex relationship, Roy’s writing life, politics, memory, and becoming
Neha Dixit’s The Many Lives of Syeda X tells the story of an invisible woman worker whose life reveals the realities of migration, informal labour,
Heart Lamp is an emotional and evocative read. It is a portal that takes the readers into a world where we see it through the
Alpa Shah’s The Incarcerations examines the Bhima Koregaon case, the BK-16, planted evidence, dissent, democracy, and the targeting of activists in India.
Anita Anand’s The Patient Assassin tells the story of Sardar Udham Singh, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Michael O’Dwyer, revenge, memory, and colonial injustice.
My Seditious Heart is a collection of essays by Arundhati Roy written over the past two decades. The essays are on wide variety of subjects
By Hands Now Known is a doorway to the history of injustice in the Jim Crow era, providing an insight into the atrocities faced by
A fine book capturing the stories of nine extraordinary women athletes of India. It takes the readers through the trials and tribulations, success and failures,
A collection of some brilliant stories of grit, inspiration and resilience of the people of Palestine.
Alpa Shah’s Nightmarch takes readers into India’s Maoist belt, exploring Adivasi lives, land, forests, inequality, state violence, revolutionary ideals, and the human cost of conflict.
A very well-written book, "The Promise of Canada" , capturing the history of Canada through the lives of some of the magnificent people of Canada
An ethnographic approach to Muslims in eleven Indian cities with a quantitative methodology in order to give a first-hand account of this untold story.
Kavitha Rao’s Lady Doctors tells an interesting and insightful account of the six women who pioneered and paved the path for Indian girls to become
A collection of some brilliant essays by Romila Thapar about history and how it is selectively used by people in powe
A memoir that takes us into the villages of Telangana of landless and bonded labourers and how the author organised and helped them fight for
Nandita Haksar’s The Many Faces of Kashmiri Nationalism explores Kashmir’s modern political history through the lives of Sampat Prakash and Afzal Guru.
Freny Manecksha’s Behold, I Shine captures how conflict and militarization in Kashmir have affected women, children, families, public spaces, and everyday life.
Ambedkar : Towards an Enlightened India is a must read for everyone who wants to know and read about Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.