A traipse through Toronto’s snowy flurries can simultaneously be a stroll in the warming footsteps of literary greats. John Irving, that verbose titan of storytelling, lives in the city, using it as a backdrop to his 1989 book A Prayer for Owen Meany. Margaret Atwood, visionary dystopian, studied here and perhaps glimpsed Gilead between Downtown’s sparkling high-rises. Rohinton Mistry emigrated here in the 1970s, studied at the university, and wrote the monumental A Fine Balance (1995) while looking back across the oceans at India. Then there’s Michael Ondaatje, Miriam Toews, Anne Michaels. So many footsteps, so many tales. 

Bakka-Phoenix Books – 84 Harbord Street 

And where might those intriguing footsteps take us? Our first stop is the Bakka-Phoenix sci-fi emporium in Harbord Village, clutching the fringes of the University of Toronto’s august campus. Once sharing a building with Glad Day (see below) and claiming to be the most ancient of sci-fi booksellers, Bakka-Phoenix has more spicy Frank Herberts, more Clarkean odysseys, and more cheerless Tchaikovskys than you can shake a lightsabre at. The atmosphere is rarified, the clientele cerebral, the collection significant.  

A requested recommendation for a local visionary led me, via William Neuromancer Gibson (a Vancouver resident transplanted from America) and Margaret Atwood, to A E Van Vogt, a Canadian contemporary of Isaac Asimov. Giddy, exhilarating, troubling and obtuse, his stories feature horrifying extra-terrestrials and hair-pin twists that left me confused and amused. 

And where might those intriguing footsteps take us? Our first stop is the Bakka-Phoenix sci-fi emporium in Harbord Village, clutching the fringes of the University of Toronto’s august campus. Once sharing a building with Glad Day (see below) and claiming to be the most ancient of sci-fi booksellers, Bakka-Phoenix has more spicy Frank Herberts, more Clarkean odysseys, and more cheerless Tchaikovskys than you can shake a lightsabre at. The atmosphere is rarified, the clientele cerebral, the collection significant.  

A requested recommendation for a local visionary led me, via William Neuromancer Gibson (a Vancouver resident transplanted from America) and Margaret Atwood, to A E Van Vogt, a Canadian contemporary of Isaac Asimov. Giddy, exhilarating, troubling and obtuse, his stories feature horrifying extraterrestrials and hair-pin twists that left me confused and amused. 

BMV Books – 471 Bloor Street West 

Just two blocks north, on pullulating Bloor Street West, is the cavernous BMV Books. A daunting den of literature old and new, used and pristine, it’s a place to dive in and embrace the seemingly chaotic collection. Academic architectural studies rub spines with ribald graphic novels and well-thumbed thrillers – this is a place to lose yourself and discover the Turkish historical fantasy romance you never knew you were looking for. Fair warning, all three Toronto BMVs are time black holes, and a whole afternoon can easily disappear, along with a fair few Canadian dollars. You won’t regret it though.

A Different Booklist – 779 Bathurst Street 

Out we go, briefly into the snow and round the corner to the resolutely political and progressive A Different Booklist, which stocks “the rich literature of the African and Caribbean diaspora and Global South” as well as a multitude of talented Indigenous writers. A perusing of its groaning shelves will take in sports biographies, historical analyses, impassioned political treatise, and some eye-opening novels. There’s room for anti-establishment blockbusters like The Hunger Games and – inevitably – The Handmaid’s Tale here, but I picked up In the Upper Country (2024) by Kai Thomas, which reveals the harsh realities of Canada’s place at the end of the Underground Railroad, and the bravery and sacrifice that sustained growing communities there.

Little Ghosts – 930 Dundas Street West

Back on the treacherously icy sidewalks again, we head south through the soul-warming miasma of Little Italy to the quirky horror repository of Little Ghosts. A resolutely independent and friendly little store, its shelves are of course haunted by (Stephen) King and (Dean) Koontz, (Shirley) Jackson and (M.R.) James. They also display a fine line in homegrown, eerie classics. Half an hour of perusing the shelves with the well-informed clerk saw me taking home novels by Nick Cutter (The Troop, 2014), Regan McDonnell (Black Chuck, 2018) and Ian Reid (I’m Thinking of Ending Things, 2017). An offer to take home a second copy of David Cronenberg’s dense and worrying Consumed (2015) was deftly side-stepped.

And if you uncover a local novelist who you fall in love / fear with, there’s a fair chance they’ll appear at one of Little Ghosts’ regular, well-attended community events, where the curious and the convinced gather to share their passion for the supernatural. For the ghosthunters in your life, there are spooky cards and gifts. 

Back on the treacherously icy sidewalks again, we head south through the soul-warming miasma of Little Italy to the quirky horror repository of Little Ghosts. A resolutely independent and friendly little store, its shelves are of course haunted by (Stephen) King and (Dean) Koontz, (Shirley) Jackson and (M.R.) James. They also display a fine line in homegrown, eerie classics. Half an hour of perusing the shelves with the well-informed clerk saw me taking home novels by Nick Cutter (The Troop, 2014), Regan McDonnell (Black Chuck, 2018) and Ian Reid (I’m Thinking of Ending Things, 2017). An offer to take home a second copy of David Cronenberg’s dense and worrying Consumed (2015) was deftly side-stepped.

And if you uncover a local novelist who you fall in love / fear with, there’s a fair chance they’ll appear at one of Little Ghosts’ regular, well-attended community events, where the curious and the convinced gather to share their passion for the supernatural. For the ghosthunters in your life, there are spooky cards and gifts. 

Glad Day Bookshop – 32 Lisgar Street 

Once more into the chilly air, and a bracing walk south through the idyllic Trinity Bellwoods Park, the final shop where I stomped snow off my shoes is the oldest LGBTQ+ bookstore in the world – Glad Day Bookshop. Once the heart of the cacophonous Church and Wellesley gay district, and now settled into its new home in artsy West Queen West, Glad Day is a chimera formed from community needs – so much more than a repository of literature. For over 50 years it has been a place for physical (and intellectual) nourishment, a political epicentre, and even a great spot to find a date and make new friends. It has survived movements physical and social, and even prosecution, and its copious collection covers a spectrum of queer experience in Canada, and far beyond. 

On friendly and insightful advice, I picked up David Kingston Yeh’s Ontario-set YA novel The Boy at the Edge of the World (2017), a dizzying coming-of-age tale that skips and jumps joyously through Toronto’s gay community. One might happily browse the curated-with-pride collection of local authors’ work, or dive into one of the regular drop-ins for – and with – neighbourhood writers and join a thriving, ribald and ambitious literary scene. 

And now we’re done for the day. This colourful meander between some of Toronto’s many friendly, inspiring bookstores can fill an afternoon, though it could just as easily take up a full day, with time set aside for coffee, poutine and maybe a little bit of reading too. And the next day, those footsteps are there for you to follow all over again.

Note: This bookshop guide gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image credit: Elena Berd on Shutterstock.

Additional uncredited photos by Greg Taylor.

Do you know a place with great bookshops? As part of a regular feature on LSE Review of Books, we’re asking academics and students to recommend their favourite bookshops in a particular city or town to share with our book-loving community of readers the world over.

Bookshops could be academic, alternative, multilingual, hobby-based, secret or underground institutions, second-hand outlets or connected to a university. We’d like to cover all world regions too and are particularly keen to feature cities outside of Europe and North America.

If something comes to mind, we’re looking for a brief introduction about the city, a selection of three or four bookshops with around 150 words per bookshop, detailing why each one is a must-see. Our editorial team can then find suitable photos and links to accompany the piece, though you’re welcome to supply these too.

Email us if you’d like to contribute: lsereviewofbooks@lse.ac.uk

The post The best bookshops in Toronto, Canada first appeared on LSE Review of Books.

Convenience Store Woman. Sayaka Murata. Translated from Japanese into English by Ginny Tapley Takemori. Granta. 2019.

This story is about an autistic woman in Japan, who finds her safe place working in a convenience store. While the outside world is chaotic, unpredictable and confusing, the social norms, interactions, and daily routines of the convenience store provides the infrastructure that Keiko, the protagonist, understands. It is clear through the narrative that Keiko is autistic, although this is never explicitly addressed by her family or her colleagues. She understands that she is different, she struggles to understand social interactions, and she regularly masks in social settings, drawing on a range of pre-learned social cues to survive in the world. The book deals with the pressures of modern life, including societal pressures to conform, such as by marrying and having children. The book also questions how we find purpose and meaning in the work that we perform, and how the world has been shaped to accommodate a-typical and not neurodiverse people. It’s a powerful and tender narrative that challenges assumptions about autistic people and asks us to reflect on what we can do to accommodate neurodiversity in the workplace.

Recommended by Kay O’ Neill, Communications and Events Manager, Department of Government

Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism. Robert Chapman. Pluto Press. 2023.

As someone with ADHD and working as a disability and mental health practitioner, I enjoyed Empire of Normality because it articulates really powerfully how society constructs “normality’” – giving language and context to many of the challenges I see both personally and professionally.

Recommended by Lucy Mu, Staff Disability and Mental Health Adviser, HR Division

eff-able: a spicy anthology of queer crip poetry. George Parker and JP Seabright (editors). Fourteen Publishing. 2025.

eff-able: a spicy anthology of queer crip poetry is an anthology by authors who often face multiple forms of marginalisation due to being both queer and disabled. The anthology examines forms of intimacy, desire, and sensuality which are often missed or actively erased during discourse on disability. Poems range from hilarious to devastatingly sad, to poignant and incredibly tender.

Recommended by Andrew Crane, Receptionist and Administrative Assistant, Estates Division

Strong Female Character. Fern Brady. Brazen. 2023.

Fern’s description of life as a young autistic woman growing up undiagnosed is written with incredible wit and honesty and reflects her experience of being neurodivergent which many will be able to relate to. She writes just as she talks, with a thinly veiled rage against the misunderstandings and mistreatment she had to deal with as well as being laugh-out-loud funny, which is quite a balance! I couldn’t put it down.

Recommended by Kirsty Mackenzie, Deputy Head of Disability and Mental Health Service

The Scottish comedian describes her experience of late-diagnosed autism and the challenge women and girls face in getting diagnosed. It won the Nero Book Award for non-fiction in 2023 and is very funny! I loved it.

Recommended by Stef Hackney, Head of LSE Disability and Mental Health Service

This book is full of humour, but it also has a raw frankness in describing her frequent meltdowns and difficulties associated with living as a neurodiverse person in a world designed for the neurotypical. It really shows the value of offering support services for children to enable early detection.

Recommended by Heather Dawson, Librarian, LSE Library

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Carson McCullers. Penguin Classics (2008); originally published 1940.

I’d like to recommend The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. This powerful novel explores themes of isolation, communication, and the human condition through the lens of its central character, John Singer, a deaf-mute man navigating life in a Southern town in the USA. McCullers’ sensitive portrayal of disability and difference invites reflection on how society engages with those who experience the world differently.

Recommended by Jacqueline Mujico Executive Assistant, International Inequalities Institute

Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Alan Brinkley. Oxford University Press. 2010.

When I was growing up, disability was almost always depicted as a hindrance of some kind – as a condition of life which the individual could only hope to manage as best they could. What depictions of disability in my childhood didn’t show was how disability could be not just part of, but could actually determine, lives of immense consequence.

A 2022 survey of presidential historians ranked Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR) as the greatest President in US history – he is certainly the most important President of the 20th Century. In 1921, FDR was left permanently paralysed from the waist down following a bout of sickness (the cause of which is still disputed). This presented a significant practical challenge for a young politician – given both the campaigning expectations of the age and contemporary attitudes towards disability – but FDR later served as Governor of New York and in 1932 was elected President of the United States. FDR entered office in 1933, in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash. His economic, social and political reforms – popularly known as the “New Deal” – were critical to addressing lack of confidence in the financial system, chronic job shortages and the resulting poverty which had swept the nation. It’s thought that FDR’s own experience of being disabled made him more sympathetic to the plight of the vulnerable in society – the elderly, workers and the poor – than he might otherwise have been given his exceptionally privileged upbringing.

FDR went on to become the only US President to serve more than two terms, dying in office in April 1945 after overseeing the most effective democratic coalition in modern history which would bring the Second World War to an end a few months later. For all his human faults, he was a remarkable person and his own experience of disability fundamentally shaped that remarkable life. I would recommend reading about him to anyone.

Recommended by Kieran Darling, Senior Human Resources (HR) Policy Adviser, HR Division

The Anti-Ableist Manifesto: How to Build a Disability-Inclusive World. Tiffany Yu. Profile Books. 2025.

Why I’d recommend it: This nonfiction book is approachable for disabled and non-disabled readers and can be read in small chunks. It also has great reflection questions at the end of each chapter. A must-read!

Recommended by Bex Manlove, Assistant Learning Technologist, LSE Eden Centre

As someone with ADHD who works in disability support, I loved The Anti-Ableist Manifesto because it felt uplifting and practical – it put into words the kind of inclusive world I’m always trying to help build.

Recommended by Lucy Mu, Staff Disability and Mental Health Adviser, HR Division

Greek Lessons. Penguin. 2024. Han Kang. Translated from Korean into English by Deborah Smith and e. yaewon. 2023.

Han Kang’s Greek Lessons centres on a woman, living in Seoul, who has lost her ability to speak after the trauma of losing custody of her son in a bitter dispute with her ex-husband. She is learning Ancient Greek in her spare time, and forms a relationship with her teacher, a German immigrant to Korea who is going blind and feels increasingly isolated in his life. It’s a haunting meditation on the loneliness that is part of the human condition and feelings of isolation connected to disability. But it’s also a hopeful, tender story about two people in pain finding comfort in one another, written in poetic, ruminative prose by this Nobel-Prize winner.

Recommended by Anna D’Alton, Managing Editor, LSE Review of Books, Communications Division

LSE Review of Books thanks all the members of the LSE community who contributed to this reading list with their book recommendations.

Note: This post gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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The post Eight books to read for UK Disability History Month first appeared on LSE Review of Books.

Dhaka is a city suffused with a romance, alive with the tinkle of rickshaw bells, a melange of aromas and the sweet hum of Bangla, a proud and rich language. This version of Dhaka is less familiar internationally than a city, teeming with people, pollution and traffic. There are perhaps two Dhakas, then, which defy simple explanations and require poetry to unpick.  

The city has existed since the 7^th century and rose to prominence in the 17^th century, serving as a hub for textile trade under the Mughal empire. Under British colonialism, Dhaka was surpassed by Kolkata, which became the administrative centre of Bengal. In 1971, after Bangladesh achieved independence from Pakistan, Dhaka became the capital of the newly formed nation. 

The city is home to important literary institutions like the famous University of Dhaka, the Bangla Academy and a litany of tea stalls, where people of all ages, classes and backgrounds engage in adda, a uniquely Bengali word for hangouts characterised by wide-ranging discussions.

Bengal is a land of literature, poetry and song, and Dhaka plays an important part in that history. The city is home to important literary institutions like the famous University of Dhaka (known affectionately as “The Oxford of the East”) the Bangla Academy and a litany of tea stalls, where people of all ages, classes and backgrounds engage in adda, a uniquely Bengali word for hangouts characterised by wide-ranging discussions. It was through adda I was first introduced to Dhaka’s intellectual and literary worlds. 

Bengal Boi, Dhanmondi 

Set slightly off from the loud main road in Dhanmondi, a historic and affluent neighbourhood in the heart of Dhaka, Bengal Boi is an oasis. Its large gate opens into a calming yard where you are greeted with sloping vines and leafy trees that create a cool space with a café where you can sit and have refreshments. Beyond this sits the bookshop, Bengal Boi, (“Bengal book”). It sits on the first floor of a modernist building and holds a diverse selection of Bengali and English books, covering topics like academic social science, poetry, literature, graphic novels and the most recent internationally acclaimed novels. The books are well presented in a carefully designed space which exudes a calm and quiet devotion to literature Despite its name, the space is not limited to books alone. Upstairs there is a gallery space boasting a rotation of beautifully curated cultural exhibitions giving a taste of the local art scene. The bookshop also hosts diverse events, from poetry recitals to live music, earning its place as a cultural hub in the heart of Dhaka. 

Nilkhet Book Market 

Not far from the curated calm of Bengal Boi is the delightful chaos of Nilkhet book market. A short walk from the University of Dhaka and opposite the well-known New Market, Nilket is a book market that takes up an entire city block. Small stalls with unwieldy towers of books extend down alleyways for as far as you can see. Book sellers call out from among floor to ceiling piles of books, competing for custom. While many shops sell rather dry textbooks, others have a dizzying array of Bangla and English literature. Do not be intimidated by the towers of books; instead talk to the shopkeepers who bring order to the chaos, finding books instantaneously among the unordered piles that would make a librarian weep and removing them with a dexterity that challenges the boundaries of physics.

The Bookworm, Gulshan 

In North Dhaka’s Gulshan neighbourhood sits Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed Park, overlooking a lake. It’s a spot where young lovers meet away from the prying eyes of their family, and affluent Gulshanites take their daily exercise. Within this small park sits The Bookworm, a bookshop that sits somewhere in the middle of the chaotic stimulation of Nilket and the calming curation of Bengal Boi. Serenely nestled under trees on the southern corner of the park, The Bookworm draws you in with floor-to-ceiling displays of books in every category you could want, in both English and Bangla. The Bookworm often hosts book launches, so it is worth checking their Facebook page for upcoming events.

Note: This bookshop guide gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image credit: Lumenite on Shutterstock.

Do you know a place with great bookshops? As part of a regular feature on LSE Review of Books, we’re asking academics and students to recommend their favourite bookshops in a particular city or town to share with our book-loving community of readers the world over.

Bookshops could be academic, alternative, multilingual, hobby-based, secret or underground institutions, second-hand outlets or connected to a university. We’d like to cover all world regions too and are particularly keen to feature cities outside of Europe and North America.

If something comes to mind, we’re looking for a brief introduction about the city, a selection of three or four bookshops with around 150 words per bookshop, detailing why each one is a must-see. Our editorial team can then find suitable photos and links to accompany the piece, though you’re welcome to supply these too.

Email us if you’d like to contribute: lsereviewofbooks@lse.ac.uk

The post The best bookshops in Dhaka, Bangladesh first appeared on LSE Review of Books.

1. The Catch. Yrsa Daley-Ward. Merky Books. 2025.

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2025, this mesmerising book is the first novel from poet and writer Yrsa Daley-Ward. It concerns twin sisters, Clara and Dempsey, somewhat estranged following the disappearance of their mother, Serene. One day, Clara believes she sees their mother, but with a crucial ‘‘catch’’ – this Serene has not aged and she has no children.

As the twins grapple with whether Serene truly can be their mother returned, this novel engages with mother-daughter and sibling relationships, the question of what it means to live your life with and for another, and what it means to assert the right to live for yourself. Most movingly for me, this book captures the uncanniness of grief – how we can so deeply feel the absence of a loved one and yet (re-)encounter their presence in strange, new and unfamiliar ways. As Daley-Ward writes of those we have lost: ‘‘they remain. Inside and around us, they keep coming back.’’

Recommended by Rosemary Deller, Research Engagement Manager, Communications Division

2. The Fire Next Time. James Baldwin. Penguin Classics. 1963.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin consists of two essays discussing personal experiences and thoughts on race and racism. The essays were intended as a testimonial in times of segregation in the US but (unfortunately) have remained as global and relevant as ever. I could go into great detail about why everyone should read this book at least once in their life, but I will let this quote, taken from “A Letter to My Nephew” speak for itself: “You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early. We cannot be free until they are free.”

Recommended by Isabel Lacurie, Marketing and Communications Manager, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method & Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science

3. The Trees. Percival Everett. Influx Press. 2022

The Trees is set in a rural, primarily white and overtly racist US town. Using the backdrop of a detective-led investigation, the author sheds light on America’s past by tackling lynchings, stereotypes and collective memory. Situational humour and historical horror blend seamlessly in this excellent page-turner.

Recommended by Andreea Gavrila Senior Research & Innovation Engagement Manager, Research & Innovation Division

4. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca Skloot. Picador. 2024.

Henrietta Lacks was a Black woman whose cancer cells, taken without her knowledge in 1951, became one of the most important tools in medicine. Known as HeLa cells, they were vital in developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more. The book is not just a scientific biography; it’s a profoundly human story that exposes the racial and ethical injustices embedded in medical research. Henrietta’s story is framed within a broader history of medical exploitation and makes for a powerful critique of systemic racism in healthcare, much of which persists to this day. I read this book over a decade ago now and it is one that really stuck with me. It is an incredibly important, deeply emotive, and undeniably formidable read.

Recommended by Amanda M. Gaddes Department Manager, Department of Health Policy

5. The Fraud. Zadie Smith. Penguin. 2024.

The ostensible focus of The Fraud is a semi-fictionalised account of the life of Eliza Touchet, the housekeeper of the (now largely forgotten) Victorian novelist William Ainsworth. However, like the Victorian literature the book draws on, The Fraud contains a multitude of narratives, focusing on London literary society, the cause célèbre of the Tichbourne claimant and the life story of Andrew Bogle a former slave and key witness in the trial. In this way The Fraud creates a composite picture of Victorian society that speaks to contemporary issues of identity, “post-truth” and populism. While pulling no punches in its depiction of the authors of the time (especially Dickens), The Fraud draws on their earnest moral clarity, to fill a silence in these writings with regards to the UK’s (continuing) entanglement with empire, colonialism and slavery.

Recommended by Michael Taster, Managing Editor, LSE Impact Blog, Communications Division

6. Windrush: 75 Years of Modern Britain. Trevor Phillips and Mike Phillips. Harper Collins. 2023.

I’m suggesting this book as I believe the efforts of the Windrush generation are often overlooked when discussing race relations and the ethnic minority experience today. This book helped me to understand their unique experiences during this period and how it has shaped the UK today.

Recommended by Joe Faulkner, Communications, EDI & Student Experience Officer, Department of Mathematics

7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Junot Diaz. Faber & Faber. 2008.

This Pulitzer-Prize-winning book traces the history of a family in the Dominican Republic who lived under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo and later moved to the United States. It’s whimsical, funny, Spanish language-infused, and delivers a reading experience like no other, as it’s full of lengthy tangential foot notes and pop culture quips. I’d recommend having the annotated webpage open nearby to guide you through them.

The book skilfully explores the traumas experienced by a family during dictatorship and how this inherited trauma plays out in the present day. It also highlights the sexualisation of women and gives unflinching accounts of sexual violence and harassment against women. This aspect of the book sits uncomfortably with the fact that Díaz has himself been accused of sexual misconduct and misogynistic behaviour. It makes the book an interesting example of whether we can or should separate the work from the writer.

Recommended by Kay O’ Neill, Communications and Events Manager, Department of Government

8. Why We Kneel, How We Rise. Michael Holding. Simon & Schuster. 2021.

Why We Kneel is powerful, interesting book outlining the experiences of racism from one of the all-time great cricketers, Michael Holding, along with a whole litany of instances where the achievements of black people have been erased from the history books.

Recommended by Andrew Young, Chief Operating Officer, Executive Office

9. Rivers of London (series). Ben Aaronovitch. Gollancz. 2011 to present.

I love the Rivers of London series, and its protagonist, Peter Grant, a Met Detective who joins the super-natural arm of the police force, The Folly. Peter’s mom is from Sierra Leone, and the books are filled with a tapestry of not just historical insights to London, but its cultural diversity.

Why I have also suggested these books is that it made me realise that when I read, my imagination creates images of characters that are like me – white, English speaking. And I remember my surprise (coupled with shame) when I had to re-calibrate the picture in my head which had Peter as a liberal, white, English detective. An excellent example of how deep, our subconscious-bias is.

Recommended by Kerryn Krige, Senior Lecturer in Practice, Marshall Institute

10. Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire. Akala. Two Roads. 2018.

Natives is honestly one of the most eye-opening books I’ve read. Akala doesn’t just talk about race and class in Britain, he lives it, and that personal perspective makes all the difference. He shares what it was like growing up mixed-race in Camden, and connects that to the bigger picture of Britain’s colonial past and how it still shapes our society today. What really struck me is how clearly he shows the everyday impact of systemic racism in schools, in the media, in the way people are treated. It’s part memoir, part history, and part reality check. I’m recommending it for Black History Month because it doesn’t just help us understand the past, it pushes us to face the present.

Recommended by Yvonne Olusoga, Project Development Officer. LSE Library & LSE Library Cochair EmbRace Staff Network

11. Calling Una Marson: The Extraordinary Life of a Forgotten Icon. June Sarpong and Jennifer Obidike. Akan Books. 2025.

“I am glad I am black / There is something about me that has a dash in it.”

When i first heard these lines from the poem “Black is Fancy” on a BBC 2 documentary, I was astounded that the writer Una Marson is now largely unknown to British audiences. Yet her achievements as a writer and the first Black woman broadcaster and producer at the BBC were astonishing  at a time when race equality legislation did not exist and women were not expected to have independent careers.

This biography traces her life from her birth in rural Jamaica in 1905, describing how she worked her way up from a stenographer to a published poet, newspaper editor and founder of the literary journal Cosmopolitan. It provides an absorbing account of how her move to the UK led her to join The League of Coloured Peoples and become editor of its journal, The Keys,  campaigning  for Black civil rights. Then in 1938, she became the first Black woman to be employed by the BBC, developing the Calling the West Indies and Caribbean Voices series to showcase West Indian perspectives and talent. Yet the book does not shy away from describing the levels of overt racism which she suffered and her own battles with mental health. From my perspective, this makes her overall achievements all the more remarkable, and inexcusable that she has become so easily forgotten – situation which I hope this biography may remedy.

Recommended by Heather Dawson, Librarian, LSE Library

12. Augustown. Kei Miller. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. 2016.

Set in a fictionalised version of a deprived neighbourhood of Kingston, Jamaica, Augustown revolves around the story of the “Flying Preacherman”, Alexander Bedward, which Ma Taffy tells her grandson, Kaia. Though the “official” history dismisses it as a myth about a madman, she maintains she witnessed him fly, and claims it as an act of Black resistance against white oppression in 1920s Jamaica. The narrative links this event to the book’s present, 1982, when Kaia suffers a cruel punishment by a teacher, sparking an uprising and clash with police that has catastrophic consequences.

It’s simultaneously a gripping tale of a small community’s resistance, an exploration of slavery’s legacies, and a powerful interrogation of which stories are privileged or buried in the telling of history. The narrative moves between different time periods and perspectives, embodying the various ways that the past interrupts and acts on the present. Miller is a poet as well as a novelist, and this comes through in the beauty and vividness of Augustown’s language.

Recommended by Anna D’Alton, Managing Editor, LSE Review of Books, Communications Division

13. You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience. Brene Brown and Tarana Burke (editors). Vermillion. 2021.

I first read this book three years ago, and it had a lasting impact on me, so much so that I often find myself revisiting it. It thoughtfully and powerfully explores themes of vulnerability, shame, and resilience through the lens of the Black experience. These are subjects that are often avoided, which makes the book all the more powerful and necessary.

Recommended by Ann-Marie Majekodunmi, Wellbeing Adviser, Student Wellbeing Services

14. Dream Count. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Fourth Estate. 2025.

This year, I wanted to recommend a book that not only reflects the richness of Black womanhood but also speaks to the quiet, everyday strength so many of us carry. Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does exactly that. It’s a beautifully written, emotionally layered novel that follows four African women – Chiamaka, Zikora, Omelogor, and Kadiatou, whose lives unfold across Nigeria and the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. The book captures the internal worlds of these women, their longings, regrets, and resilience with such honesty and grace.

A quote from the book asks: “Why do we remember what we remember? Which reels from our past assert their vivid selves and which remain dim, just out of reach?” That line stayed with me. It reminded me how memory, identity, and belonging are often shaped by forces beyond our control, but also how we reclaim them through storytelling. This book is a quiet revelation. It’s not just about the pandemic, it’s about the emotional truths we carry, the choices we make, and the ways we find ourselves through connection and reflection. I hope it sparks meaningful conversations during this Black History Month at LSE.

Recommended by Yvonne Olusoga, Project Development Officer. LSE Library & LSE Library Cochair EmbRace Staff Network

15. The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer. Janelle Monáe. HarperVoyager. 2022.

Janelle Monáe’s debut book expands the world of her Dirty Computer album (the best album of 2018 in my opinion!) into a bold collection of Afrofuturist short stories. Co-written with acclaimed authors, the book explores a dystopian future where memory is controlled to suppress queerness, Blackness, and individuality. Each story is a powerful reflection on identity, resistance, and liberation, blending sci-fi and technology with social justice. The central theme linking these stories is certainly pertinent in today’s world: Whoever controls our memories controls the future. This book is a celebration of imagination and human defiance, and a vibrant tribute to Black queer futures and the power of storytelling.

Recommended by Amanda M. Gaddes Department Manager, Department of Health Policy

16. To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee. Penguin. 1960.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a timeless classic that I picked up only recently. I loved how it captures humanity and the biased society through the eyes of a child. Set in the racially charged American South, it weaves innocence and injustice into an unforgettable tale about compassion and equality. This beautifully written novel compelled me to reflect on my morality and conscience while feeling like a warm hug. I know it is always going to be one of my top recommendations!

Recommended by Tania Gandhi, Project Coordinator, LSE Consulting Team, Research and Innovation Division

17. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. Rotimi Babatunde. Oberon Books. 2018.

18. Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad. Damilare Kuku. Swift Press. 2022.

19. And So I Roar. Abi Daré. Sceptre. 2024.

I recommend these three Nigerian novels – And So I Roar by Abi Daré (book cover pictured, left), The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Rotimi Babatunde and Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad by Damilare Kuku – because they have shared themes of female empowerment, resistance, gender dynamics, secrets, and survival. They differ in structure and tone, but they reveal how women cope with trauma and reclaim agency. Often with humour and vulnerability.

Recommended by Adeola Akande Pierre-Noël, Centre Manager, Phelan United States Centre

LSE Review of Books thanks all the members of the LSE community who contributed to this reading list with their book recommendations.

Note: This reading list gives the views of the contributors, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics.

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Combining Efforts: 200 Years of Trade Union History is showing at LSE Library from 15 September 2025 to 31 January 2026.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the passing of the 1825 Combination Act. The Act legalised the formation of trade unions in the UK, but the recognition of workers’ voices and campaigns remained contested. This exhibition traces some of the history of the development of trade unions through years of struggle, triumph, defeat and resilience. 

Alongside historical campaigns, it also shines a spotlight on underrepresented voices within the movement, including those to promote LGBTQ+ rights and the vital contributions of Black trade unionists today.  The exhibition was jointly curated by Indy Bhullar, Chelsea Collison and Jeff Howarth, and features materials from the Trade Union Congress Library, which was founded in 1922 and is housed as part of the Special Collections at London Metropolitan University.

Co-curating this archival exhibition, I was struck by how much feels relevant today. Police violence reported in a student newspaper, a trade union leader’s speech about propaganda and war, or a campaigner demanding representation in union meetings, these seven items may come from the past, but their echoes are hard to miss.

1. Jackie Lewis’s delegate lanyard, NALGO conference, 1983

Ephemera is defined as “minor transient documents of everyday life”, and this delegate name badge (with personal flair) that Jackie Lewis wore at the National and Local Government Officers Association (NALGO) conference in 1983 is the perfect example. Lewis saved this badge  at the time, and it is now preserved for perpetuity in the TUC Library at London Metropolitan University. This is why I love archives: even the smallest object can hold a story, carefully stored until it meets someone curious enough to bring it out.

Lewis was vital in pushing NALGO to set up a national Lesbian and Gay Committee and has campaigned on and helped create policy to address discrimination against and the rights for LGBT+ people in the workplace.

2. Speech by Sir Walter Citrine at Albert Hall Meeting, 3 December 1936

Sir Walter Citrine’s speech calls out the control of information, suppression of dissent and glorification of war. Sound familiar? I’ve chosen this item because his warning still resonates today. Citrine became the leader of the Trades Union Congress during the 1926 General Strike and spent the next twenty years at the forefront of the organised labour movement. As you might guess, he was also heavily involved in Britain’s Anti-Nazi movement. He gave this speech at a meeting to advocate for democracy and to inform the British public of the grave danger the Nazi regime in Germany, Fascists in Italy, Civil War in Spain and Communism posed to international peace and freedom.

3. Article on Grunwick violence in The Beaver, 1977

LSE Students’ Union founded The Beaver in 1949, and it has since reflected both student life and broader political, cultural, and social issues. It’s no surprise to see the violent clash between police and protesting workers at Grunwick make the headlines in this 8 November 1977 issue, but I always find it exciting to see a major event reported by a small local press. I appreciate the reporters’ authenticity and honesty when they state:

“The events were so confusing that it took about fifteen people to compile this story-we think we have produced a fairly accurate picture of what actually happened. We don’t, however, excuse our obvious bias. If you and you had been there, whatever political group you whatever political group you belong to, you too would have been as horrified and incensed by the actions of the police as we were.”

This is followed by a play-by-play of the police violence that took place at the Grunwick protest ending with the question “Is it practical to place one part of society above the rest and expect it to be infallible? If it is not, we would be far better off without a police force.” Thank you, Beaver, for asking the big questions!

4. Matchworkers’ Strike Register, 1888

The significance of this item is in the details. Look closely and you’ll see the name of Sarah Chapman, a member of the Matchgirls’ Strike Committee who was elected as President of their new union, the Union of Women Matchmakers. Her name is, alongside those of 263 workers from the Centre and Top Centre workshops, 186 workers at the Victoria factory and 263 workers at the Wax and Box Stores and Patents. Names of each worker are accompanied by their address, marital status, occupation, last week’s wages and whether they live at home or independently. 

After the strike, the volume was also used as a scrapbook or guardbook with press cuttings, letters and other documents either pasted onto the pages or filed loosely between them. The register was given to the Trades Union Congress in 1977, transferred to the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University) in 1998 and underwent conservation at the University of Dundee in 2000. (Information from TUC History Online.)

5. Black Trade Union Oral History Project, 2022-2023

Not so much an item, but a collection of voices, the recordings of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists speaking to London Met students enable us to hear from trade union activists of 2022-2023. When I first listened to details of their campaigns and first-person passion for justice, I got goosebumps that the physical archive just can’t produce. Here is a stand-out quote from an interview with Michelle Codrington-Rogers: “I would be in all these meetings saying this needs to be a room for us. Where’s the Black voices? Where are the Black representatives? What is going on with this union?”

6. Newspaper clipping and handwritten notes on artificial flower making, c.1900

There is always so much more to say than the exhibition has space for. This newspaper clipping and handwritten note both come from the archive of Gertrude Tuckwell, a prominent British social reformer, trade unionist, and campaigner for women’s rights. The 40 boxes in the collection (housed in the TUC Library archive) include correspondence, a substantial press cutting collection, pamphlets and reports. Tuckwell herself systematically assembled the items to illuminate key issues and events in women’s struggle for equality and representation. How she found the time to curate her own collection amazes me!  

The newspaper clipping reports on the terrible working conditions of artificial flower makers who earned a “starvation wage” for work about which “it is impossible to exaggerate the tediousness”. At the time, artificial flowers were widely used in millinery (hat-making), home decoration, and fashion accessories. The description of the work lends a new meaning to the phrase “suffer for fashion”.

The anonymous handwritten note describes the conditions of one such flower-making location, a workshop at the address of “Mrs Jones, 9A. Cromer Street”.  The worker describes the workroom as “a completely underground cellar”, notes the hours of work as “hours of work 6am to 18pm or much earlier if there is daylight’ and reports, “eyesight much affected by colours; and close sitting to work”.

7. R.H. Tawney’s diary, 3 May 1926

R. H. Tawney’s diary entry is dated 3 May 1926, the day the TUC called a General Strike, which lasted nine days and is Britain’s only to date. Tawney was a British economic historian, social critic, and influential thinker on labour, education, and social justice. The entry documents how coal miners were being forced into accepting a drasticwage reduction before talks could be held ahead of the strike. One of the core elements of trade unionism is to protect, as well as improve, their members’ pay and conditions, which Tawney’s words bring to life.

Note: This article gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credits: LSE Library from the exhibition Combining Efforts: 200 Years of Trade Union History running from 15 September 2025 to 31 January 2026.

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Resisting the Nuclear: Art and Activism Across the Pacific. Elyssa Faison and Alison Fields (editors). University of Washington Press. 2024.

Resisting the Nuclear: Art and Activism Across the Pacific edited by Elyssa Faison and Alison Fields arrives at a time of increased global nuclear anxiety. An inaugural book from the series Critical Ethnic Studies and Visual Culture (University of Washington Press), the book turns to a paradigm of “resistance” through art and activism to consider responses to nuclear legacies past and present. This is a wide-ranging and ambitious collection which deviates from previous scholarship that focuses largely only on art-objects, and instead expands the nuclear humanities context by drawing from “anthropology, sociology, art history, arts education, environmental management, history, art, and photography” (7). 

Nuclear survivors and anti-nuclear resistance 

The book carefully attends to “originary” nuclear moments (Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Trinity) to situate anti-nuclear imaginaries outside of a solely Cold War framework (8). This is made ever-present by an important introduction early on to a character who emerges throughout the book: the Hibakusha (a Japanese term for survivors of the atom-bomb). This important recurrence of the hibakusha by contributors is part of a broader privileging of the voice of direct sufferers, survivors and indigenous actors. Particularly welcome throughout is an examination of the racialisation and stratification of hibakusha, who still face discrimination, both socially and economically. This focus exemplifies a broader emphasis the editors place on localised experiences, which in turn moves the books criticality away from Euro-American conceptions of universalised/global resistances. Instead, the book carefully exposes the acute limits, antagonisms and difficulties those who were directly impacted face in pursuit of resistance.

This important recurrence of the hibakusha (a Japanese term for survivors of the atom-bomb) by contributors is part of a broader privileging of the voice of direct sufferers, survivors and indigenous actors.

The idea of a “monument” is skilfully deployed throughout the narrative, to tie potentially disparate chapters together – from tourist sites, abandoned bunkers and temples, to exhibitions, art objects and more. Arguably, the book is itself a timely monument to modes of creative response and resistance through its focus on those overlooked and written-off antinuclear histories. Yet, the editors are careful to ensure that, when we consider “monuments”, we do so through a lens of Anti-monumentalism: whether they be art objects, tourist test-sites, commodities, exhibitions, performances, and even humans (who can, as in the case of the hibakusha, become reified as monuments to nuclear disaster). We must be careful, the editors warn, not to present such locales, sites and bodies as homogenous or static, but rather perceived within a criticality that resists “static, fixed, representation” (117). This in turn enables us to push “against dominant narratives of resistance” and privilege a “focus on those who have been relegated to the margins” (6).  

Disability and gender in activist movements 

An incident prevalent in later chapters is the Lucky Dragon incident of 1954: a Japanese fishing boat with 23 onboard which became contaminated by fallout from nuclear testing in the area. Here, the book’s impressive criticality and self-reflection on the potentialities (and limits) of resistance is especially evident. Takenaka’s chapter (207-216) on “Housewives petitioning for World Peace” offers an important reflection on the gendered dynamics of activists’ response to the incident. In particular, she elucidates how female activists “versed in political activism” (209) became characterised as “naive housewives” by those in pursuit of an anti-nuclear petitioning reliant framed within a “grassroots effort by ordinary mothers” (209). As a disabled scholar, I further welcomed Wake’s consideration (237-253) of the struggles faced by “atomic veterans” exposed to radiation during military roles who subsequently became disabled and Wake’s book explores this theme in more depth for those interested in further reading. Alongside scholarly reflections, intimate contemplation and interviews with artists on their personal ethical conundrums clearly sketch out provocations for artists to take forward in their own work and develop. Striking examples include Takeda’s musings on collaborations with hibakusha (970-116) and Diné artist Will Wilson’s work on the Navajo Nation (275-280).   

Resistance through art beyond the visual 

In such a varied and wide-ranging book, motifs around which the chapters coalesce are not immediately obvious. Between monuments, hibakusha, artistic ethics, commodification and tourism, the book dances from topic to topic and across various methodological practices. Though introductory musings and Machida’s opening section (13-48) on WW2 Pacific Art seem to offer a model for future chapters, this art-historical reading of visual nuclear is actually more of an outlier, as the book quickly switches to much broader art-activist strokes. For those interested in a strictly artistic investigation, there are, however, other works which have taken up this task, such as British Art in the Nuclear Age (Routledge, 2012) and Fukushima and the Arts (Routledge, 2017). 

Resisting the Nuclear effectively enables us to grapple with the complicated devastation of the nuclear, and the diverse and resilient forms of resistance that have emerged in its wake against it.

Resisting the Nuclear’s departure from a strict visual context has a clear purpose within the emergent field of nuclear-environmental humanities, wherein prior works focused on either a strict reading of art-objects or art and activism in a few singular locations. Perhaps the closest counterpart to this book is Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age (Routledge: 2023) though this focuses largely on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The generative and unique potential of Resisting the Nuclear is therefore arguably its open-endedness. The chapters which historicise modes of activism and deviate from discussions solely of the visual only serve to expand understanding of the contexts in which art practices, artists and their various interlocutors emerge and the impacts they make in furthering the language of nuclear resistances. 

Imagining anti-nuclear futures 

A quick Google search for the “Atomic Museum” (Nevada, US) tourist gift shop site advertises a top-selling board game called Proliferation, which encourages players to “unleash devastating nuclear force to dominate your rivals”. In a time where the horrific impact of nuclear technologies, destruction and waste have been increasingly normalised, commodified and even trivialised to the point of becoming the theme for a board game, we must arguably return to the sound of the doomsday clock, which, as the book reminds us, ticks ever closer to its midnight toll from which there will be no going back (168). Resisting the Nuclear effectively enables us to grapple with the complicated devastation of the nuclear, and the diverse and resilient forms of resistance that have emerged in its wake against it. This volume will undoubtedly provoke other scholars, activists, artists and more actors to imagine other anti-nuclear futures, and even, perhaps, to bring them about.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main Image Credit: Battered religious figures stand watch on a hill above a tattered valley in Nagasaki, Japan on 24 September 1945, six weeks after the city was destroyed by the world’s second atomic bomb attack. Credit: Cpl. Lynn P. Walker, Jr. (Marine Corps) via Wikimedia Commons.

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Page and port –discovering Hamburg’s book scene 

Though nestled in northern Germany, miles from the open sea, Hamburg is renowned for its port: the largest in Germany and among Europe’s busiest. The harbour, along with the trade and commerce it fostered, shaped the city’s identity, and continues to define its DNA today. Unlike vibrant boho Berlin, just two hours away by train, Hamburg rarely springs to mind as a literary powerhouse – at least not at first glance. 

Look closer, however, and you’ll discover a thriving cultural scene with reading culture deeply embedded in the city’s fabric. Hamburg boasts multiple (large and small) literature festivals, including Harbour Front, Hamburg liest with changing annual themes, Lange Nacht der Literatur with events spread throughout the city until late into the night and early morning, the Nature Writing Festival in 2025 or Nordische Literaturtage for Scandinavian authors and literature. It’s also home to a prestigious Literaturhaus (a stage in an elegant villa hosting regular readings and author events , various literary prizes, an innovative library system, publishing houses that have stubbornly refused to relocate to Berlin, and passionate independent bookshops scattered throughout every district. Each of these offers carefully curated literary selections and events that venture far beyond the mainstream. 

This guide spotlights a handful of these special places, all centrally located and easily accessible during even a brief city visit. Each maintains a thoughtful selection of English-language books as well. 

Felix Jud – a Hamburg institution

Let’s begin with a true Hamburg institution: Felix Jud established this bookstore in 1923 (originally at a different location, now located at Neuer Wall 13, 20354 Hamburg ), and it has carried his name ever since, remaining devoted to exceptionally curated selections throughout its history. You’ll marvel at how the booksellers manage to stock both contemporary literature and classics across their compact three floors – which also accommodates a section for antiques and art for sale. 

The selection radiates a profound love for the written word and particularly beautiful editions. Even voracious readers will stumble upon books that have never crossed their radar. This browsing experience unfolds amid classic interiors of rich wood and densely packed shelves. The historical ambiance provides a welcome contrast to the ostentation and glitter of the luxury shopping street where the bookshop has courageously held its ground for years, proudly honouring the legacy of its founder – a declared opponent of the Nazi regime who deliberately refused to change his surname. During the Nazi era, he used his shop windows for daring interventions and secretly supplied customers with banned books.

Blattgold – a golden discovery

A personal recent discovery is Buchhandlung Blattgold (Wexstraße 28, 20355 Hamburg), established only in 2018 yet already honoured with the prestigious national Bookshop Prize in 2022, primarily for exceptional service. Don’t be deceived by first impressions: while the selection appears sparse, every single title (novels and socially relevant non-fiction) represents an excellent choice. Blattgold proves invaluable when you lack the energy to excavate overstuffed shelves crammed with books and are in need of some guidance. 

The airy, bright, welcoming spaces give browsers ample room and tranquillity to engage with the selection. The name isn’t merely wordplay –as the bookshop shares its space with a goldsmith, contributing to a pleasant, unhurried atelier atmosphere. (Plus, Public Coffee Roasters right next door serves some of the city’s finest coffee!)

stories! – modern excellence

stories! (Straßenbahnring 17, 20251 Hamburg) is a contemporary bookshop that proves why we don’t need large chains or delivery services: it offers excellent, lightning-fast service, thoughtful curation across all genres, numerous events, and coffee with homemade cookies. While centrally located, it’s somewhat hidden, but a large sign guides visitors from the main street to the laneway between the building rows where it’s located. 

The great strength of stories! lies in its passionate staff (their recommendations never miss!) and its superb selection extending into every niche, as well as popular picks; stories! effortlessly balances displaying bestsellers in their windows while pointing your nose toward “the special.” Particularly ingenious is their “room within a room,” where currently discussed titles are presented alongside reviews. The lovingly stocked children’s book section is especially good. As much as possible is displayed cover-forward, creating the sensation of wandering through an exhibition. 

Dr. Götze Land & Karte – a geographical goldmine

An enormously cherished curiosity is Dr. Götze (located at Alstertor 14, 20095 Hamburg): a bookshop specialising in maps, atlases, globes, and every conceivable type of travel literature. Founded immediately after the war in 1946, it’s now Germany’s largest “geographical specialty shop,” possibly even in all of Europe. They carry the complete selection of travel guides and hiking maps (in appropriate scales) for even the most remote corners of the world, plus historical maps, star atlases and literary travelogues. 

You might think this isn’t your thing, but this boutique shop’s charm is simply overwhelming. Don’t miss consulting their passionate expert team, even for vague or distant travel plans; the staff know their craft and are happy to advise, pursuing their work with the passion of true world explorers. 

Kapitel Drei – a reader’s sanctuary 

While I understand the reverence for books as material objects deep in my soul, I’m primarily a reader. This might be because I’m a librarian who borrows rather than buys most of my books. For me it’s about the stories, about reading itself, and I fear many books are purchased more as proxies for this experience than for actual reading. 

That’s why my final recommendation is my favourite place, one genuinely devoted to reading. Kapitel Drei (Hospitalstraße 69, 22767 Hamburg) is a book café where, no matter when you visit, you’ll see people reading at every table (many on their own) or discussing books. There’s a small selection of new and used books (mainly novels, especially classics and fantasy, plus poetry and non-fiction on feminism and LGBTQ+ topics), but you’re welcome to bring your own reading material. 

There’s something magical about reading surrounded by other readers and I highly recommend incorporating this place into your Hamburg visit to remind yourself what books are truly about. Kapitel 3 was founded in 2023 by two young women who took this bold step in the post-COVID years. You can feel their love and dedication to this very special place in every detail, down to every last crumb of their (vegan) cake. 

Postscript

Finally, if you’re looking to combine your own reading with exploring Hamburg’s special places, you should check out Flexibles Schmökern – a unique concept that invites you to a reading hour in changing locations. 

Note: This bookshop guide gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image credit: canadastock on Shutterstock.

Author image credit: Christiane Müller Sabine Vielmo © via The New Institute website.

Do you know a place with great bookshops? As part of a regular feature on LSE Review of Books, we’re asking academics and students to recommend their favourite bookshops in a particular city or town to share with our book-loving community of readers the world over.

Bookshops could be academic, alternative, multilingual, hobby-based, secret or underground institutions, second-hand outlets or connected to a university. We’d like to cover all world regions too and are particularly keen to feature cities outside of Europe and North America.

If something comes to mind, we’re looking for a brief introduction about the city, a selection of three or four bookshops with around 150 words per bookshop, detailing why each one is a must-see. Our editorial team can then find suitable photos and links to accompany the piece, though you’re welcome to supply these too.

Email us if you’d like to contribute: lsereviewofbooks@lse.ac.uk

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Queer Politics in Times of New Authoritarianisms: Popular Culture in South Asia. Somak Biswas, Rohit K Dasgupta and Churnjeet Mahn (eds.). Routledge. 2024.

Beyond Western liberal frameworks

How have queer politics evolved in South Asia over the past several decades? This is the question taken up in a volume edited by Somak Biswas, Rohit K. Dasgupta and Churnjeet Mahn which first appeared in the special volume of South Asian Popular Culture in 2023. It comprises seven chapters dealing with issues pertaining to the burgeoning of queer politics amidst the landscape of new authoritarianism in South Asia. The editors, while introducing the volume, survey the existing scholarship that has looked into the development of queer politics in the region, and argue that unlike the West, queer activism in South Asia does not have a linear relation with liberal democracy. Instead, queer activism in this region has grown out of the enmeshed relationship of contestations and negotiations with neo-liberal states. These inherent contradictions that are embedded in queer movements in South Asia thus provide a fertile gr​​​​ound for enquiry. Like seminal works centred on South Asian popular culture such as Gayatri Gopinath’s Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Culture (2005), this volume also focuses on popular culture, extending its definition to include “zines, web series and public art” changes in “social processes” and “everyday realities” (4).  

Resistance through popular culture

The first chapter by Sarala Emmanuel and Ponni Arasu is a careful reflection on ​​​​Sri Lanka’s sodomy laws of 1883 and how it infringes upon the lives of queer people of the region up to the present day. With their involvement as activists, they highlight the role of international NGOs in ushering in LGBTQI+ ​​​​rights-based discourse and the state’s conditional redressal to the decriminalisation law in lieu of the growing influence of the western market economy. Shermal Wijewardene’s chapter similarly explores the ambiguity inherent to sodomy laws and their equivocation, which render unequal sexual citizenship to queer men. By analysing the anglophone play The One Who Loves You So (2019), revolving around the lives of two queer men from different social backgrounds in contemporary Sri Lanka, he effectively demonstrates the equivocal nature of the law that adjoins the pervasive role of the state in “reproducing the internal stratification of queer citizenship” (37). Both the chapters emphasise the role of new authoritarianism in the gradual transformation of sodomy laws in Sri Lanka that allow conditional interstices for the formation of queer politics, but only by facilitating the growth of majoritarian values that are conceptualised by the state in congruence with the elites. 

The third chapter by Sruthi B. Guptha and Sandhya V offers a critical analysis of the film Udalaazham or Body Deep (2018), through the lens of caste and precarity, which has been largely excluded in the depiction of transgender characters in popular Malayalam cinema. The film revolves around Gulikan, who belongs to the tribal (Paniya) community, as he navigates his sexuality amidst societal hostility due to his tribal caste and gender expressions. The authors, while juxtaposing the film within the context of larger Malayalam cinema, propose the dimensions of “gender-liminality” in understanding Gulikan’s sexuality. Their employment of this term offers a new way of understanding identities complicated by multiple contestations that cannot be defined within the fixed conceptualisation of being transgender. 

Arnapal and D. DasGupta’s framing of trans-indigeneity as a ‘radical breakthrough offering a different kind of on-the-ground alter trans/queer politics’ is a crucial contribution to a growing the queer politics in Northeast India.  

Brain A. Horton’s chapter on queer zines prevalent in Bombay during the 1990s and 2000s such as Bombay Dost, Scripts and Gayzi Zines posits them as an “overlooked archive of queer and trans culture in India” (58). His chapter evokes a sense of excitement as we progress through the salacious “gossips” or “masala” from Bollywood that appear throughout the zines, which in a way speak for the queer readership of the time in Bombay. The concept of “queer sociality” employed here is significant, as it emerges through the pages of the zines and engenders a “commitment to the creative critical work of imagining collective possibilities” (60). 

Intersecting trans, queer and indigenous experience

Maisnam Arnapal and Debanuj DasGupta take into account the representation of Northeast India in popular Hindi cinema that has framed the cultural imagination of the Northeast as the racial “other”. Amidst the appropriation of queer politics in the region by the Hindu nation-state, they posit that there is “futurity” in projects the Chinky Homo Project, a digital queer anthology of North East India and Nupi Maanbi’s activism in Manipur, a trans-indigenous movement. Their framing of trans-indigeneity as a “radical breakthrough offering a different kind of on-the-ground alter trans/queer politics” (84) is a crucial contribution to a growing the queer politics in Northeast India.  

Krystal Nandini Ghisyawan examines the vandalisation of the mural titled “Home is Where We Make it” by Amrisa Niranjan, an Indo-Guyanese artist on 29 April 2022 in New Jersey, US. Including an interview with the artist, she explores the mural’s defacement as a symbolic representation of anti-immigrant sentiments and her approach to queerness alludes to the larger notions of “otherness” and “unbelonging” that is pervasive in the cultural imagination that discursively denies “them a space for existence within the national body” (87). Not being geographically rooted in South Asia, this chapter deviates slightly from the regional cohesiveness of the volume, but is nonetheless significant.  

Analysing the curation of their digital identities on Instagram, Alim notes that such self-representations engender a radical queer futurity for members of trans and hijra communities

The final chapter by Tanvir Alim probes the self-representation of trans and​​ hijra (transgender, intersex, or eunuchs who follow a kinship based system in South Asia) identities on Instagram in Bangladesh. He foregrounds the ​​​​role played by international bodies such as foreign donors and NGOs in the growth of trans rights advocacy, and the neoliberal notions of self-optimisation in the formation of digital identities. While analysing the curation of their digital identities on Instagram, he notes that such self-representations engender a radical queer futurity for members of trans and hijra communities, specifically in “community making and civil rights activism” (101).  

Queer Politics in Times of New Authoritarianism is an essential addition to the scholarship on Queer Studies in South Asia. Despite the chapters being geographically limited to a few countries, which the editors dutifully disclose and justify at the outset, it presents a nuanced analysis of queer politics under new authoritarianism critically reimagined through the lens of popular culture.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image: SolomonAsghar on Wikimedia Commons.

Read an article by Rohit K. Dasgupta, Desi queers: celebrating queer South Asian history in Britain in LSE Research for the World.

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Cultures of Sustainable Peace: Conflict Transformation, Gender-Based Violence, Decolonial Praxes. Hyab Teklehaimanot Yohannes, Alison Phipps and Tawona Sitholé (editors). Multilingual Matters. 2025.

It can be hard to feel hopeful in times like these. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is reaching into its third year, with thousands killed and many more displaced. The violent conflict between Israel and Iran has devastated the lives of civilians in the region in the past two weeks. Though the US has intervened to broker a fragile ceasefire agreement, we are yet to know whether it will hold and how events will evolve. And every day, we learn more horrifying news about the death, destruction and denigration faced by Palestinians in the ongoing Nakba (catastrophe) across Gaza and the West Bank. 

Of course, for many, these are not simply stories in the news. They are lived realities which mould and shape bodies, psyches, and whole communities – something which Cultures of Sustainable Peace does an excellent job of reminding us with a curation of thirteen chapters in an Open Access edited collection focused on arts-based and cultural approaches to peace and peacebuilding. These contributions build on and complement notable existing scholarship from peace-oriented thinker-practitioners such as John Paul Lederach and Paulo Freire.

The featured projects span a range of geographies […] affirming the “Global South” as a central, rather than marginal, site from which to theorise, know, and live peace

Cultures of Sustainable Peace stakes out the contributions that critical and interdisciplinary approaches to peace can offer to Peace Studies as an intellectual discipline and peacebuilding as a set of practices with and beyond academia. Many of the contributions narrate and analyse experiences and insights from a range of projects that formed part of the Culture for Inclusive and Sustainable Peace (CUSP) project. The projects written about span a range of geographies (including but not limited to Palestine, Zimbabwe, Colombia, and Mexico); affirming the “Global South” as a central, rather than marginal, site from which to theorise, know, and live peace – a desperately needed approach within a field that tends to discard and sideline Indigenous and Southern knowledge and practices of peacebuilding.

The origins of Peace Studies 

The field of Peace Studies emerged in the mid-20^th century and is strongly associated with the scholarship of Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) he established in 1959. A considerable amount of Galtung’s work – especially in his later years – focused on issues of justice and inequity. However, Cultures of Sustainable Peace rightly points out that, aside from some exceptions, the Peace Studies field often fails to fully consider the “intersectionality of gender” (1) as shaping the work and lives of peace practitioners, artists, and cultural workers. 

Many of the chapters foreground the precarious material conditions and institutional restrictions under which this work must take place – providing behind-the-scenes insight into peacebuilding research and praxis often obscured in the scholarship.

In this edited collection, Hyab Teklehaimanot Yohannes, Alison Phipps, and Tawona Sitholé draw together a series of compelling chapters which raise challenging, but deeply necessary, questions and affirmations on the kinds of contributions and capacities that cultural interventions are poised to make in response to violence in all its articulations. Violence, here, is understood not just as the manifestation of conflict on an international scale (i.e., between states) but also within societies – with a heavy focus on racialised, gender-based, and institutionally sanctioned violence as priorities within peacebuilding agendas. 

The work of peacebuilding 

Interestingly, many of the chapters also foreground the precarious material conditions and institutional restrictions under which this work must take place – providing behind-the-scenes insight into peacebuilding research and praxis often obscured in the scholarship. The chapters in Part 3 (drawn together under the title “Reflexivity, Dilemmas and Safeguarding with Grassroots Organisations”) bring together transparent insight and frank reflection on some of these conditions and restrictions which CUSP-funded projects faced. 

Chapter 12, “Between Success and Failure: Researching with Grassroots Organisations Involved in Conflict Transformation” by Julie E. McAdam, Cristina Amescua, and Evelyn Arizpe is a standout chapter here. It carefully reflects on processes of arts-based and cultural peacebuilding (and the scholarship which emerges from it) as work. Work is situated in relation to labour which “carries with it the potential to be alienating and oppressive” (252). The work, then, is deeply relational. It is “connected to building, making and maintaining a world fit for all” (252) – a world in which love, joy, and connection underpin our relationships with each other; where trust is important. 

And still, even in this work of cultural and intercultural peacebuilding, this trust and the good relationships it enables can be undermined. Even where researchers and practitioners seek to avoid this. Both Chapter 11 and the concluding chapter by Alison Phipps narrate the vulnerability of the kinds of trust, partnership, and ethical landscapes that we build in peacebuilding work. This work is contingent on hospitable material conditions. In other words, they need to be funded – and, as in the case of, CUSP they are/were. Yet, at any moment, such funding, contingent on states and institutions, can be withdrawn. 

Funding cuts and their impacts 

Cultural, arts, and “overseas” projects are especially vulnerable to such cuts. CUSP was no exception. Three days after launching its call for proposals and small grants in March 2021, CUSP’s funding from the UK government was frozen and cut by 80 per cent to “take money back from international development, renege on global commitments to overseas development assistance and spend this instead on prison-style detention facilities for those seeking asylum” (271). Such candid reflections from the authors and editors about how this affected their work is invaluable. It will raise interesting and urgent questions for Peace Studies scholars and students working across a wide range of contexts. The material conditions of peacebuilding work – especially in its cultural and arts-based iterations – are often made invisible, but for a short acknowledgement at the end of a journal article. But such cuts (threatened or actual) can and do threaten the foundations that uphold cultural peacebuilding work. McAdam, Amescua, and Arizpe’s chapter thus offers valuable and specific insight into what it means to navigate such circumstances and interpret the “failures” that they bring to the shape and nature of peace projects.

Even in the context of such deep loss, the authors and editors demonstrate a courageous commitment to ‘looking for spaces where peace might be possible’

The focus on peace in Cultures of Sustainable Peace is hopeful, but it is not naïve. The haunting words of Refaat Alareer’s poem, “I Am You” precede an “Un-Foreword”, grounding the concerns of the following chapters in the devastating reality in which peacebuilding work must and does take place. Alareer was an English literature scholar from Gaza who was the lead investigator on one of CUSP’s small grant awards. He was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on 6 December 2023. The “Un-Foreword” is written in place of a foreword that Alareer had invited Phipps to write for a volume of poetry which he never got to publish. Even in the context of such deep loss, the authors and editors demonstrate a courageous commitment to “looking for spaces where peace might be possible” (274). And in doing so, they light and fan the sparks of “a peace, bright with the sadness” that could sustain the ‘peace and the loss that was and is, and is to come’ (275).

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image: Comalapa mural artists in Guatemala via UN Women on Flickr. License: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

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Decisionscape: How Thinking Like an Artist Can Improve Our Decision-Making. Elspeth Kirkman. The MIT Press. 2024.

How do we make decisions? In what way does our proximity to a problem influence our choices in relation to it? What information do we consider, and what do we ignore? These are some of the questions Elspeth Kirkman attempts to answer in Decisionscapes: How Thinking Like an Artist Can Improve our Decision-Making.

The “decisionscape” [is] a clever portmanteau bringing together the mental image of a painted landscape and the practice of decision-making

Following a familiar template established by books like Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, and the works of Malcolm Gladwell, Kirkman draws heavily on existing research in psychology and sociology to support her thesis. The book is structured around fundamental elements of artistic composition ⁠– distance and diminution, viewpoint, composition, and frame ⁠– which she argues are central to decision-making. Through this analysis, she develops the concept of the “decisionscape”, a clever portmanteau bringing together the mental image of a painted landscape and the practice of decision-making. With this, she presents the reader with a new language for capturing how individuals can think like artists when pressed to make consequential choices.

The introduction presents perspective as the main artistic innovation, utilising historical examples including the cave pig-art of Indonesia and Brunelleschi’s articulation of linear perspective in Europe. By examining how these innovations come together Kirkman develops a multi-criteria framework for decision-making founded in classical artistic instruction. While the introduction frames the sections to come as “thinking like an artist,” it is the only section of the book that is directly connected to the artistic imagination. In the first part, The Decisionscape, the author provides examples illustrating how artists build and deconstruct shapes to convey information, create temporal, spatial, social, and even hypothetical distance, and import meaning by comparing depth and perception in Western and Eastern artwork.

Across the four major parts of the book, Kirkman provides examples of how individuals can streamline decision-making. In Distance and Diminution, her own research into Child Protection Service workers in the US and UK takes centre stage. She highlights how close physical and psychological proximity can obscure the goal of finding a suitable temporary home for a child in need as quickly as possible. By diminishing the decisionscape, a social worker can prioritize a placement that is good enough today rather than waiting months for an ideal but impractical option.

Moving on to Viewpoint, Kirkman examines how temporal and spatial constraints shape perspective. This section explores how place-linked philosophical and societal values influence individual choice by comparing how Korean and American subjects respond to reward payment structures, particularly in relation to delays and discounting behaviours. By returning to the contrast between Western and Eastern viewpoints, Kirkman reinforces how cultural context shapes decision-making.

Composition, the third part, outlines how categorical thinking, patternmaking, and gestalt philosophical principles restrict and extend what is brought into the decisionscape. Inattentional blindness-our inability to perceive the unexpected-can lead us to miss important details which are necessary considerations for our decisionscape.

Finally, in Frame, the reader’s attention is turned to how the language we choose to use or avoid ⁠– including whether something is communicated through active or passive voice ⁠– shapes the limits individuals place around their own decisionscapes.

The thinking patterns outlined in the book are supported by ample research. Kirkman succeeds in providing a structured and accessible framework for individual decision-making, drawing on compelling real-world examples. The use of artistic concepts as an analogy for cognitive processes offers a fresh way to consider how we perceive and navigate choices. As structured, this book presents compelling evidence for how adopting an artistic perspective across a range of scenarios could yield tangible individual benefits.

After reading the book, one might think the main artistic practice is to consider perspective, but this misses a crucial motivating force. Before taking pen to paper, an artist’s ideation phase is driven by curiosity

Throughout the book, Kirkman reinforces differences between Eastern and Western artistic expression. In the Western artistic tradition, following Brunelleschi, artists adopted linear-point perspective. In contrast, even as Western techniques spread across the world, the atmospheric and parallel projection of the East remained a primary artistic motif. This juxtaposition of Eastern and Western perspectives in artistic distance, viewpoint, composition, and frame presents a missed opportunity to explore how cultural mores and social values both reinforce and restrict artistic thinking.

This gap becomes particularly evident in the conclusion. In the final chapter, Kirkman attempts to extend the decisionscape to problems of collective action, including climate change and future wellbeing. Yet, because the book frames the task of re-examining one’s perspective as a largely solo endeavour; it remains unclear how it this approach can be meaningfully applied to collective decision-making. While Kirkman acknowledges that philosophical perspectives are shaped by cultural origins ⁠– collectivism in the East versus individualism in the West ⁠– she stops short of providing a usable framework for fostering collective action across geographic and ideological divisions, despite considering global climate change the most pressing challenge of our age.

After reading the book, one might think the main artistic practice is to consider perspective, but this misses a crucial motivating force. Before taking pen to paper, an artist’s ideation phase is driven by curiosity. For the past 15 years, the Stanford d.school has worked to encourage a culture of curiosity as a means to solve big problems through their design thinking bootcamps. While perspective is an essential component of their methods, curiosity is seen as the foundation for effective design and problem-solving.

A valuable resource for those who must balance conflicting criteria and multiple objectives to achieve individual or organisational goals

The shadow of curiosity looms over every example presented in the book; it is at the heart of the decisionscape, yet never directly acknowledged. This is particularly important because solving big problems requires more than stepping outside one’s own perspective – it requires active engagement across perceptual divisions. If, as Kirkman states in her conclusion, the goal of this book is to expand the decisionscape to support problem-solving and collective action for our biggest challenges, we must also think about the whys that shape the decisionscapes of people from different places and who hold different perspectives.

In the end, Decisionscape successfully applies the metaphor of artistic perspectives to provide a framework for individuals navigating complex, time-consuming, and high-stakes decision-making. It is a valuable resource for those who must balance conflicting criteria and multiple objectives to achieve individual or organisational goals. Despite the critiques outlined above, Decisionscapes fulfills this role and may help individuals make more confident, less regrettable decisions.

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