The Best Of 2019 in Books by Women

Books are wonderful things. They pick one up for great adventures without having to move an inch. 2019 was a great year for the written word. In a world inundated with so many distractions, books are still going strong, thanks to some wonderful people called authors. Women’s writing was exceptional in 2019, with loads of books by female authors. Here’s a list of some of the must reads transcending genres.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo:  This is one of the best writings this year, almost lyrical in its flow. It follows 12 characters, most of them black British women, moving through the world in different decades and learning how to be. Each character has a chapter; within the chapters their lives overlap, but their experiences, backgrounds and choices could not be more different. It is a book about a country, Britain, with its women giving us a perspective in History.

The Tenth Museby Catherine Chung: Boys are better at Math. How often has this stereotype been parroted? This myth is pierced by Chung as she creates a grad student with a razor sharp mind whose relentless attempt to prove a legendary hypothesis exposes a deeper algorithm about herself. Chung spins her captivating novel from stories of actual women who, in her words, “posed as schoolboys, married tutors, and moved across continents, all to study and excel at mathematics.”

Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India by Madhavi Menon: ‘The history of desire in India,’ writes the author in this splendid book, ‘reveals not purity but impurity as a way of life. Not one answer, but many. Not a single history, but multiple tales cutting across laws and boundaries.’ Vatsyayana, author of the world’s most famous manual of sex, Kamasutra insists that he did not compose it ‘for the sake of passion’, and yet remained celibate through the writing of it. Gloriously subversive, full of extraordinary analyses and insights, this is a book you will read to be enlightened and entertained for years.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood: A sequel to the widely popular, ‘A Handmaid’s Tale, this book has been declared the winner of Goodreads Choice 2019.  The sequel picks up the story more than fifteen years after Offred, the main protagonist of Handmaid stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead. The brilliantly written book answers all the questions that have tantalized readers for decades. As the author explains, “Dear Readers: Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.” –Margaret Atwood