SUPPORT THE CNJ: CLICK ABOVE TO ADD YOUR DONATION TO OUR BIRTHDAY APPEAL

For Women’s History Month, LUCY POPESCU reveals her reading list:

• In Hags (Fleet) Victoria Smith asks why women over 40 are treated with such disdain. Often they find themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings, to be ignored, pitied or abused. Each chapter takes a different theme – care work, beauty, violence, political organization, sex – and explores it in relation to middle-aged women’s beliefs, bodies, histories and choices. Smith traces these attitudes through history, and explores the reasons why this type of misogyny is so very now.

• LEILA Aboulela’s terrific new novel, River Spirit (Saqi), explores a young woman’s rites of passage during the revolutionary war in Sudan. Opening in 1877 Sudan, Akuany and her brother are orphaned in a village raid, and rescued by Yaseen, a young merchant. Yaseen’s vow to care for them will tether him to Akuany throughout their lives. As revolution begins to brew, led by the self-proclaimed Mahdi (a spiritual leader who, it is believed, will appear at the end of times to rid the world of evil and injustice), Sudan begins to prise itself from Ottoman rule, and everyone must choose a side

• Cecile Pin’s debut novel, Wandering Souls (4th Estate), explores a family’s fracture and the healing power of stories. After the last American troops leave Vietnam, siblings Anh, Thanh and Minh flee their village and embark on a perilous boat journey to Hong Kong. Their parents and four younger siblings make the crossing in another vessel but as weeks go by it becomes clear that only one party has survived the voyage. Anh, Thanh and Minh find themselves alone in the world, without family or home. They navigate refugee camps and resettlement centres until they arrive in Thatcher’s Britain. Here they must build new lives in a place that doesn’t seem to want them.

• In Glowing Still (Abacus) Britain’s foremost woman travel writer Sara Wheeler records her life of adventure, from the Antarctic to Zanzibar. Wheeler describes her travelling life – what is “important, revealing or funny” – in a notoriously testosterone-laden field. Growing up among blue-collar Conservatives in Bristol where “we didn’t know anyone who wasn’t like us”, Wheeler knew she needed to get away. In her 20s she began her dramatic escape: Pole to Pole, via Poland. She recalls happy days on India’s Puri Express; an Antarctic lavatory through which a seal popped up and the louche life of a Parisian shopgirl.

• Kristztina Tóth is one of Hungary’s most accomplished writers who is also active in the struggle for women’s rights. Her collection of 15 stories, Barcode (Jantar Publishing) is out this month, translated by Peter Sherwood. Most are narrated from the perspective of a young, unnamed female protagonist. Tóth writes about childhood acquaintances, school camps, love and deceit.

• Drawing on the experiences of seven women, psychotherapist, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung sheds light on some of our most fundamental needs and desires. From a young bride-to-be struggling to accept her sexuality, to a mother grappling with questions of identity and belonging, and a woman learning to heal after years of trauma, What Women Want: Conversations on Desire, Power, Love and Growth (Hutchinson Heinemann) explores the inner lives of women. Based on hours of conversations between Maxine and her patients, this book lays bare their fears, hopes, secrets and capacity for healing.

• To celebrate Virago’s 50th birthday, 15 bestselling, award-winning writers, including Margaret Atwood, Chibundu Onuzo, Kamila Shamsie and Ali Smith have taken up their pens to create Furies, stories of the wicked, wild and untamed. This is described as “an irresistible collection of feminist tales for our time” with an introduction by Sandi Toksvig.

• In her debut poetry collection, Peach Pig (Corsair), Cecilia Knapp examines the experience of motherlessness and its lasting impact, as well as the lessons passed between generations of women.

• Winner of last year’s Forward Prize for best poetry collection, Kim Moore’s All the Men I Never Married (Seren) deals with experiences of everyday sexism through 48 numbered poems and a gallery of exes and significant others.

• Finally, next month look out for  Diana Evans’ latest novel. A House for Alice (Chatto & Windus) explores trust, secrets and betrayal. After 50 years in London, Alice wants to live out her days in the land of her birth. Her three children are divided on whether she stays or goes, and in the wake of their father’s death, the imagined stability of the family begins to fray.

SEE ALSO CNJ’S BIRTHDAY – SUPPORT CAMPAIGNING JOURNALISM