HomeBooks7 new books for International Women's Day gifting
7 new books for International Women's Day gifting
India’s International Booker Prize 2025 contender Heart Lamp, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel in a decade and 5 more books to read and / or gift for International Women's Day 2025.
Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi: Heart Lamp, a collection of 12 stories by Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq, translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, has been longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. But that’s not the only reason to read or gift the book on Women’s Day and beyond. Mushtaq’s stories centre around the female experience, and often have a lightness that belies their tragic ending. Take, for example, the first story in the collection. Titled ‘Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal’, the story is told through the eyes of a newlywed Zeenat who befriends the much older Shaista. To Zeenat, Shaista’s marriage and her household seem ideal. Until, one day, it doesn’t. The story, which begins on an almost sprightly note, with Zeenat lamenting her government engineer husband’s busy-ness, ends with a stark reminder of how easily women are replaced even in roles where they seem to be integral. That Mushtaq tells you women’s stories without belabouring a point or lesson, is key to her craft and to the joy of reading these stories - produced over 30-plus years, from the 1990s to 2020s.
2/7
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Dream Count is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel in a decade. The writer of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun, throws readers into the lives of four West African women of different ages and backgrounds and at different stages of life in Dream Count. There’s the rich, beautiful and American-educated Chiamaka who looks at Western scholarly ideas of what it means to be African with bemusement. There’s the fiery Omelogor, a fiercely independent woman based in Abuja who bristles at any signs of self-hate among Africans in Africa. Kadiatou is a Guinean Fula who comes to America to be with her childhood sweetheart and is glad to give her daughter Binta opportunities that she and her older sister - also called Binta - did not get. Then there is Zikora, an African immigrant in America, who is a mirror to Omelogor in some ways. Where Omelogor wants to want the things tradition demands she should - a husband and kids - Zikora really does want them. Both are intelligent and successful, but they can’t see eye-to-eye on almost anything. Towards the end of the book, Chimamanda Adichie has added an author’s note. Now, the author’s intent while writing a work of fiction is seldom known to readers. And you can choose to read this book without glancing at this note. If you do choose to read it, though, it offers two important points of focus in the book. The first is the relationship between mothers and daughters - Adichie herself wrote this book while grieving for her mother Grace Ifeoma Adichie, who died in March 2021. And the second is Nafissatou Diallo’s sexual assault case against then International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in 2011 while she was working as a hotel maid in the US.
3/7
The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji: A funny, multigenerational story of a rich and affluent family that is forced to leave Iran during the 1979 revolution, ‘The Persians’ captures something that perhaps most immigrant families can relate to.
4/7
We Do Not Part by Han Kang: The 2024 Literature Nobel winner Han Kang’s latest novel looks back at South Korean history. Specifically at the 1948 Jeju uprising to protest elections in the US-occupied South Korea. Thousands were killed to quash the uprising on the island. And thousands more suspected of Communist leanings were killed or ran away to Japan in the lead-up to the 1950 Korean War. Han Kang’s story starts with a humble request from one friend - Inseon - to another - Kyungha, to feed her bird while Inseon is in the hospital. The friends two peel back layers of forgotten and remembered history in a series of strange, sometimes inexplicable revelations.
In Her Defence: Ten Landmark Judgments On Women In The Armed Forces edited by Navdeep Singh and Shivani Dasmahapatra: Through a series of advocates, an army veteran, a law professor and two retired judges, the editors revisit 10 judgments that have paved the way for greeted participation by women in the Armed Forces. The judgments discussed include “Secretary, Ministry of Defence v. Babita Puniya and Ors” delivered on February 17, 2020, by a Supreme Court bench comprising Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Ajay Rastogi, paved the way for all women officers to be eligible for permanent commission.
6/7
How India Loves: Love Stories from the World’s Largest Democracy by Rituparna Chatterjee: The book comprises true stories collected over four years. The stories themselves cover a gamut, from the rise of BDSM and the impact of porn on love and lives to the future of love in India. Last year, The X-Files and Sex Education actor Gillian Anderson had written a book collecting women’s sexual fantasies and desires, as a way to reveal “how women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous”. How India Loves is different in the way that it redirects the stories through Chatterjee’s more theme-based narrative, compared with the rawness of the letters printed in Want.
7/7
The Trunk by Kim Ryeo-Ryeong, translated by Kolab: If you have seen the K-drama by the same name on Netflix, then you know the story. Betrayed by the man she loves, Noh Inji mounts a willful rebellion by contracting out her services as a pretend-wife to men who need one for reasons ranging from loneliness to social awkwardness. Things go awry when a stalker enters the picture. The book version is just as gritty as the Netflix series, and perhaps even more edge-of-the-seat.
Chanpreet Khurana Features and weekend editor, Moneycontrol
