Shefalee Vasudev on her Ten Favourite Reads

Every book by Adam Phillips sits on my shelf. I admire his preference for self-inquiry over self-help, his resistance to cliché and his intimacy with nuance. Here, he dismantles the fantasy that change is a straightforward project, asking us why we want to become different people in the first place. His essays are astute, unsettling, and occasionally very funny.

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Pan Macmillan

I grew up with many retellings of the Mahabharata, but reading it in Draupadi’s voice transformed a familiar epic into a pulsating human story about power and pride, and how a woman’s desire is noosed by destiny. It is an extraordinary example of feminist agency and rage, reminding me that history is coloured by those who narrate it.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell Tinder Press

Few novels capture grief with such tenderness. O’Farrell takes a historical footnote—the death of Shakespeare’s son—and turns it into a luminous meditation on love and loss. I was gripped by the magnetism of Agnes, the Bard’s wife, and the way she carries wood and flowers in her marriage and motherhood. Her intuitive relationship with the metaphysical and the unseen realm shifted me emotionally.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katharine Boo, Random House

This book permanently altered my understanding of reportage. Boo combines rigorous reporting with extraordinary narrative skill to create a portrait of aspiration, inequality and resilience in a sprawling Mumbai slum. It taught me that journalism can illuminate entire systems through the lives of ordinary people.

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Fourth Estate

In this disease biography, Mukherjee transforms cancer from a medical condition into a story about science, ambition and discovery. Yet, pain and suffering speak in lower tones than humanity. It is an elegant example of how complex subjects can be made so readable. It deepened my respect for scientific inquiry and its practitioners.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung, RHUS

I first read Jung’s uncanny memoir during a seven-day silent retreat at Tushita, a Tibetan Buddhist centre in McLeodganj. It is a remarkable exploration of memory, spirituality and the unconscious. I return to it often and always discover something new about the workings of the inner life.

The Undying by Anne Boyer, Penguin

Boyer refuses the consoling narratives that often surround serious illnesses. Angry, brilliant and fiercely argumentative, she interrogates not only cancer but also the economic, medical and cultural systems that shape the experience of being ill. This is a real cancer antidote, powerfully telling of how we might die in pieces, not peace.

Autumn Light by Pico Iyer, Penguin Viking

Pico Iyer has a rare gift for finding profundity in ordinary rituals and everyday observations. Reading him creates Zen-like experiences for me. Autumn Light taught me that attentiveness is a form of wisdom, and a seemingly quiet life can contain extraordinary depth.

Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Grapevine

I first encountered Hardy’s Tess through an abridged edition as a teenager. The story of Tess is one of literature’s most devastating examinations of injustice, social hypocrisy and the burdens imposed on women. I felt a somatic empathy for Tess even before I knew what it would be like to live, think and react as a woman. Her sorrow felt like an inheritance.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Fourth Estate

Didion writes about grief with a reporter’s distance and a widow’s broken heart. What moved me deeply was the way she documents the irrationality of mourning. I return to this book whenever I am reminded that loss is not something we overcome, but something we learn to live with.

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