Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

When Aamna Mohdin travelled to Calais to report on the refugee crisis, she was confronted by a reality she had been outrunning for two decades: that she had been a child refugee herself. Determined to piece her scattered family history together, Mohdin set off on a mission. Her journey would see her cross the world: from the rooftops of Mogadishu to a reunion with a long-lost friend in Amsterdam to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Scattered is a powerful investigation into the aftershocks of displacement, written by a young woman uniquely placed to explore the refugee experience.

In 1978, the bloody conflict in Northern Ireland, known as The Troubles, had reached a boiling point. Hundreds of members of the Irish Republican Army, determined to drive the hated British out of the province—killing soldiers and police, detonating bombs, while arming themselves with firearms and explosives—had been arrested and incarcerated in the notorious British prison known as the Maze.

In a 1970s commuter town, Tracey Thorn's teenage life was forged from what failed to happen. Her diaries were packed with entries about not buying things, not going to the disco, the school coach not arriving. Before she was a best-selling musician and writer, Tracey Thorn was a typical teenager: bored and cynical, despairing of her aspirational parents. Her only comfort came from house parties, Meaningful Conversations and the female pop icons who hinted at a new kind of living.

“In her long and extraordinary career, Cicely Tyson has not only exceeded as an actor, she has shaped the course of history.” –President Barack Obama, 2016 Presidential Medal of Honor ceremony ""Just As I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set...

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

Brought to you by Penguin. In this collection of profiles, essays and travel stories, Chatwin takes us to Benin, where he is arrested as a mercenary during a coup; to Boston to meet an LSD guru who believes he is Christ; to India with Indira Ghandi when she attempted a political comeback in 1978; and to Nepal where he reminds us that 'Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot'.

Brought to you by Penguin. On 28 February 2013, a 600-year-old tradition was shattered: the conservative Pope Benedict XVI made a startling announcement. He would resign. Reeling from the news, the College of Cardinals rushed to Rome to congregate in the Sistine Chapel to pick his successor...

A piercingly powerful memoir, a grandson’s account of the coup that ended his grandfather's presidency of Haiti, the secrecy that shrouded that wound within his family, and his urgent efforts to know his mother despite the past. “A brilliant, absorbing book...I couldn’t stop reading.”...

A “funny and tragic and beautiful in all the right places” (Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Times bestseller author of Furiously Happy) memoir about the immigrant experience and life as a perpetual fish-out-of-water, from the acclaimed Serbian-Australian storyteller. Sofija Stefanovic makes the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The heart-wrenching, uplifting tale about a woman named Cupcake “[Cupcake] Brown’s confessional . . . memoir is one you can’t easily put down. Her life is nothing short of a miracle.”—Chicago Sun-Times There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the...

At once provocative and laugh-out-loud funny, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother ignited a global parenting debate with its story of one mother’s journey in strict parenting. Amy Chua argues that Western parenting tries to respect and nurture children’s individuality, while Chinese parents...

** THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ** A Best Book of 2025 for the Financial Times, The Week, Spectator, BBC History Magazine, NPR, History Today, Waterstones and Daunts 'A story that is both vast in scope and deeply personal in consequence. It is history that feels immediate and human, clear and...

Whatever Jenn Ashworth turns her hand to, I'm there to read it' BENJAMIN MYERS, author of The Offing 'With honesty, humour and determination, Ashworth's journey takes the reader from coast to coast in search of freedom' JESSICA ANDREWS, author of Milk Teeth 'A miracle of a book . . . One of our...

Sanctuary is an ancient right. But what does it mean today? Drawing on a lifetime of engagement with literature, myth, history and tradition from different cultures, Marina Warner's Sanctuary is an ambitious attempt to grapple with the sharpest questions that we are facing in today's world of...

Maya Angelou has fascinated, moved, and inspired countless readers with the first three volumes of her autobiography, one of the most remarkable personal narratives of our age. Now, in her fourth volume, The Heart of a Woman, her turbulent life breaks wide open with joy as...

For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together as they navigated the corridors of office life, the literary world, and the dramatic cultural shifts in New York City. One day, while Russell is still alive, Sloane's apartment is broken into. Along with her most prized possessions, the thief makes off with her sense of security, leaving a mystery in its place. When Russell dies exactly one month later, his suicide propels her on a wild quest to right the unrightable.

Brought to you by Penguin. Leo Varadkar shares his fascinating experience as Irish prime minister at a time of much change and turbulence, in this remarkably honest memoir. Leo Varadkar was an unlikely Taoiseach – the youngest on taking office in 2017, the first Taoiseach to be gay, and the...

In Mother's Boy, Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson reveals how he became a writer. It is an exploration of belonging and not-belonging, of being an insider and outsider, both English and Jewish. Full of Jacobson's trademark humour and infused with bittersweet memories of his parents, this is the story of a writer's beginnings - as well as the twists and turns that life takes - and of learning to understand who you are before you can become the writer you were meant to be.

The Sunday Times bestseller THE STORY OF BRITAIN during the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Find out how Britain changed in this entrancing, lively portrait of Britain’s Elizabethan Age by bestselling writer and broadcaster Andrew Marr Britain changed fundamentally during the Queen’s long...

Rory Cellan-Jones knew he was the child of a love affair between two BBC employees. But until his mother, Sylvia, died and he found a file labelled 'For Rory' he had no idea of their beginnings or ending. Or why his peculiarly isolated childhood had so tested the bond between him and Sylvia, who was single-parenting two sons in a one-bedroom fl at while working full time through the Fifties and Sixties. 'For Rory,' his mother had written on the file before she died, 'in the hope that it will help him understand how it really was ...'