Booklist

New and Recommended: Biography

Selected by the Bookshop


Our pick of the most exciting new memoirs and biographies.

From the publisher:
‘A triumphant memoir’ Cathy Park Hong, author of MINOR FEELINGS, finalist for the Pulitzer PrizeThe highly original, blistering, and unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, which…

From the publisher:
**THE SUNDAY TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR****A Financial Times Best Book of 2023**A revelatory portrait of a great museum and the moving story of one guard's quest to find solace and meaning in art'Who would have thought…

From the publisher:
'Powerful' LIT HUB'Absorbing' KIRKUS'Poignant, arresting and ultimately affirming' BOOKLISTLucy Sante has often felt like an outsider. Born in Belgium to conservative Catholic working-class parents, she was transplanted to the United States…

From the publisher:
The extraordinary twentieth-century writer Barbara Comyns led a life as captivating as the narratives she spun. This pioneering biography reveals the journey of a woman who experienced hardship and single-motherhood before the age of thirty…

From the publisher:
'A profoundly moving memoir which gripped me' Mark HaddonDiscover Catherine Coldstream's evocative account of life as a nun in the 1990s, and the dramatic events which led to her flight from the monastery.After the shock of her father's…

From the publisher:
The extraordinary true story of a West African girl’s upbringing in North Korea under the guardianship of President Kim Il Sung.In 1979, aged only seven, Monica Macias was sent from West Africa to the unfamiliar surroundings of North…

From the publisher:
AN iNEWS BEST BOOK TO READ THIS MONTH'Clement has lived a life like no other, and made of it a shimmering mosaic, a masterpiece, which is this book' Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of LessGrowing up in Mexico City, Jennifer…

From the publisher:
In this blend of memoir and criticism, Leslie Jamison turns her attention to some of the most intimate relationships of her life – her consuming love for her young daughter, and a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope – and…

From the publisher:
In Ten Bridges I've Burnt, Brontez Purnell - the bard of the underloved and overlooked - turns his gaze inward. A storyteller with a musical eye for the absurdity of his own existence, he is peerless in his ability to find the levity within…

From the publisher:
The three protagonists in this memoir are dead: a mother, a father, and a sister. A bookish and artistic family living in a beautiful old house in a pleasant part of Toronto. Two girls growing up in the 60s and 70s. All seems well until one…

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