Here are 100 books that An Unlikely Prisoner fans have personally recommended if you like
An Unlikely Prisoner.
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As a former Australian ambassador and crisis manager, I’ve worked at the coalface of international emergencies. The Consul draws on those experiences and on my deep respect for those who show extraordinary moral and emotional courage under pressure. I’ve known several of the authors on this list personally and followed their stories closely. These books, whether memoir or biography, all speak powerfully to the question of how individuals keep faith with themselves—and with others—in the hardest of circumstances.
While I’ve never met Malala, I’ve long admired her, like many others. I have worked with the Global Partnership for Education across the Indo-Pacific for the last few years and understand the life-changing impact that access to education can have, especially for girls. Malala’s voice in this book is calm, brave, and utterly persuasive.
Her story is extraordinary not only because she survived an attempt to silence her, but because she chose to speak louder afterward—not in anger, but with purpose. She reminds us that courage is not just about resistance in the moment, but a sustained commitment to hope and change.
In 2009 Malala Yousafzai began writing a blog on BBC Urdu about life in the Swat Valley as the Taliban gained control, at times banning girls from attending school. When her identity was discovered, Malala began to appear in both Pakistani and international media, advocating the freedom to pursue education for all. In October 2012, gunmen boarded Malala's school bus and shot her in the face, a bullet passing through her head and into her shoulder. Remarkably, Malala survived the shooting.
At a very young age, Malala Yousafzai has become a worldwide symbol of courage and hope. Her shooting has…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
As a former Australian ambassador and crisis manager, I’ve worked at the coalface of international emergencies. The Consul draws on those experiences and on my deep respect for those who show extraordinary moral and emotional courage under pressure. I’ve known several of the authors on this list personally and followed their stories closely. These books, whether memoir or biography, all speak powerfully to the question of how individuals keep faith with themselves—and with others—in the hardest of circumstances.
Reading this book after Navalny’s death was deeply affecting. It is, above all, a statement of faith—not in any ideology, but in the possibility of a better Russia. What stayed with me most was the blend of wit, clarity, and sheer nerve.
Navalny knew the price he might pay for returning to Moscow, but he chose it anyway. His courage was purposeful, his optimism deliberate. This book is both a personal testament and a political act, and its resonance only grows with time.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORKER, THE ATLANTIC, NPR • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • The powerful and moving memoir of a fearless political opposition leader who paid the ultimate price for his beliefs.
"Patriot is by turns funny, fiery, reflective and tragic, laced with Navalny’s trademark wry humor and idealism....a gutting personal account from a husband and father facing the reality that he will never be with his family again."—The New York Times
"Honest"—The Washington Post • "Shocking"—The Atlantic • "Uplifting." —Vanity Fair
As a former Australian ambassador and crisis manager, I’ve worked at the coalface of international emergencies. The Consul draws on those experiences and on my deep respect for those who show extraordinary moral and emotional courage under pressure. I’ve known several of the authors on this list personally and followed their stories closely. These books, whether memoir or biography, all speak powerfully to the question of how individuals keep faith with themselves—and with others—in the hardest of circumstances.
I know Peter well, and I wrote about his case in my book. That’s part of my reason for recommending it—but the greater reason is Peter’s own calm, lucid account of the ordeal he endured, and his sobering analysis of the growing global challenges to the freedom of the press.
This is an updated version of his original book, First Casualty, released recently to coincide with the film based on his story. His wrongful imprisonment in Egypt might have crushed a lesser person, but he found strength in principle. I was struck by the honesty and humility of his storytelling—it’s not about rage or grievance, but about standing up for the importance of truth, even when the cost is personal.
In a world where the first casualty of war is truth, journalists are increasingly at risk of becoming part of the battlefield. Peter Greste's career as a foreign correspondent has taken him to some of the most serious conflicts, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. Reporting from the frontline in some of the world's most dangerous countries was part of his job. But when he was charged with threatening national security and incarcerated in an Egyptian prison in 2014, he found himself in the middle of a fight – not just for his own release, but for press freedom around the…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
As a former Australian ambassador and crisis manager, I’ve worked at the coalface of international emergencies. The Consul draws on those experiences and on my deep respect for those who show extraordinary moral and emotional courage under pressure. I’ve known several of the authors on this list personally and followed their stories closely. These books, whether memoir or biography, all speak powerfully to the question of how individuals keep faith with themselves—and with others—in the hardest of circumstances.
I came to know Kylie after her release, and I mention her case in my book. What she endured—over 800 days in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison—is almost unimaginable. But what shines through this account is her fierce inner life. Kylie writes with unflinching honesty about fear, betrayal, and resilience.
I admire the way she clung to her intellectual strength and personal integrity in the face of a brutal, dehumanising system. Her story is more than survival—it’s a fight to remain whole.
'The sky above our heads was uncaged and unlike us, free.'
The Uncaged Sky is Kylie Moore-Gilbert's remarkable story of courage and resilience, and a powerful meditation on hope, solidarity and what it means to be free.
On 12 September 2018 British-Australian academic Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert was arrested at Tehran Airport by Iran's feared Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Convicted of espionage in a shadowy trial presided over by Iran's most notorious judge, she was given a 10 year sentence and ultimately spent 804 days incarcerated in Tehran's Evin and Qarchak prisons.
Held in a filthy solitary confinement cell for months, and…
I’ve now written four books, of which three are Australian history. My first two books were World War 2 military history. My publishers persist in calling each book a best-seller, and who am I to disagree? I live in France and my third book A Good Place To Hide is about a French community that rescued Jews from the Nazis. My fourth book Ten Rogues took me back to Australian history, telling the story of a bunch of ten convicts who in 1834 nicked a brig and sailed it from Tasmania to Chile without a map or a compass.
I was five years old when this book first appeared (in 1946) but I must have been about 12 when I first read it, and the memory has stayed with me ever since. Rohan Rivett was a fine Australian journalist. He was captured by the Japanese when Singapore fell in February 1942, and stayed as a prisoner-of-war for the duration. It has stuck in my memory ever since, a simple and modest account of the horrors faced by Allied prisoners held by the Japanese.
The definitive first-hand account of life as an Australian POW during World War II, particularly on the notorious Burma railway, the setting for Richard Flanagan's Booker Prize-winning The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Rohan Rivett was a journalist in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese in 1942. He escaped south—across the treacherous Bangka Strait—to Indonesia, but was soon captured and became just one of thousands of POWs struggling for existence in a Japanese camp. The struggle was to last for more than three years. Behind Bamboo is unflinching in its honesty and haunting in its realism. It is…
I've spent the last 30-years studying, reading about, writing, and teaching the story of the war between the Allies and the Japanese in the Far East during WWII. It includes of course the story of the fighting between the main protagonists, but there’s much more that has been neglected by writers and historians, certainly in the West. It includes the story of Burma and its various people; the role of India and its people as it moved rapidly towards independence and the role of China throughout. Every time I look at an aspect of the war, or read another memoir or open a dusty file in the archives, I come across more exciting material.
This is a ground-breaking book because in telling the extraordinary story of the Indian Army during the Second World War, Professor Raghavan rightly places it firmly at the center of the great victories the Allies achieved over the Japanese in 1945. This book traces the transformation of the Indian Army from a largely domestically focused constabulary of 200,000 in 1939 to a victorious all-arms combat force of well over 2 million men and women in 1945. This army for the first time reflected India as a whole, rather than the pre-war Indian Army which recruited selectively from across India.
SPECTATOR BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2016, GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2016
'Authoritative, expansive and incisive...helps restore India to the global twentieth century' Sunil Khilnani
Between 1939 and 1945 India changed to an extraordinary extent. Millions of Indians suddenly found themselves as soldiers, fighting in Europe and North Africa but also - something simply never imagined - against a Japanese army threatening to invade eastern India. Many more were pulled into the vortex of wartime mobilization.
Srinath Raghavan's compelling and original book gives both a surprising new account of the fighting and of life on the home front. For Indian…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
I've lived in Asia for more than 22 years and have extensively traveled around the region, both for work and pleasure, from the Middle East and central Asia to Japan, and Australia, New Zealand, and every country in between. Asia is the perfect setting for a thriller, as a region that’s deeply rooted in traditions, but where modernity and growth are also breathless. There can be political instability at times, and even corruption, unsurpassed wealth and shocking poverty, bankers, and prostitutes. I worked for many years as an investment banker and my experiences inspired me to write my debut thriller, Hard Underwriting, in Hong Kong, and uncover the dark side of Asia’s financial capital.
This is the latest book in Boczar’s Eric Ketch series, which follows the adventures of an American international man of mystery across Hong Kong, Macao, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Burma, in the pursuit of rubies, exotic women, and ruthless assassins.
Boczar himself knows the region very well, having lived in Hong Kong for over three decades, and worked as a war correspondent, on the porous borders of the golden triangle and in Lebanon during the civil war.
The descriptions, whether of cities, weapons, smugglers, or guerilla fighters, all feel true, and Boczar knows only too well how to tell a convincing and edge-of-your-seat story that is difficult to put down.
Southeast Asia. Eric Ketch returns to take down bad guys while still making time to take out bad girls. Some things have stayed the same while some things have changed. Communist countries have become capitalist markets. But powerful, entitled elites continue to control politics and business. The communist cadres have simply become the capitalist kingpins. Ketch gets hired as a freelance agent to do what he does best. Delivering justice. His way. However, the game board continues to elude him and he still gets torn between completing the mission and doing the right thing. Meanwhile, he remains vulnerable to exotically…
As a writer and editor, I spend a lot of time thinking about what prose—especially first-person nonfiction, which is mostly what I edit—does, and how it sets out to accomplish its project. Across forms, I tend to think humor is largely underused! No matter how serious the subject, there’s always a place for it to sharpen the critique. My book engages with topics like systemic discrimination and inequity, but throughout, I always stay attuned to the comic absurdity of my subject—both as a way to give more pleasure to the reader, and as a way to cut to the heart of what I want to express.
I love the boldness of putting “comedy” right there in the subtitle, and Pyae Moe Thet War absolutely delivers. This memoir-in-essays, about being a millennial woman in Myanmar, has one of the strongest voices I’ve encountered in recent essay collections. She writes back against the expectation that racialized and minoritized writers perform their trauma for the reader, or must be restricted to certain topics and tones. You’ve Changedsets a precedent I know other writers will feel empowered to follow.
In this electric debut essay collection, a Myanmar millennial playfully challenges us to examine the knots and complications of immigration status, eating habits, Western feminism in an Asian home, and more, guiding us toward an expansive idea of what it means to be a Myanmar woman today
What does it mean to be a Myanmar person—a baker, swimmer, writer and woman—on your own terms rather than those of the colonizer? These irreverent yet vulnerable essays ask that question by tracing the journey of a woman who spent her young adulthood in the US and UK before returning to her hometown…
As an author, humanitarian, and diplomat, I’ve seen firsthand how the everyday brutality of civil wars and ethnic conflicts is often overlooked in favor of statistics: 100,000 displaced; 500 arrested; 7 villages torched. In places like Myanmar, Ethiopia, Congo, Nigeria, and Bangladesh, I have tried to use human-centered reporting to bring a magnifying glass to the effect of these tragedies on everyday people. By focusing on the stories that most of the world would rather turn away from, I think we have a better chance to understand, and ultimately prevent, these violent political and social upheavals.
Bertil Lintner’s many books on Myanmar were essential background material for me when I lived there doing my own research on the country’s never-ending civil war. Land of Jade is a vivid and insightful study of Myanmar’s conflicts, and my favorite of his works. In 1985, he struck out to walk on foot from India, across northern Myanmar (then Burma), and eventually into southwestern China. The journey was the first (and likely only) time a journalist would undertake such an arduous, dangerous, and unforgettable trek.
His hosts along the way were a bewildering array of rebel groups at war against Myanmar’s despotic authoritarian regime. Accompanying Lintner on the journey was his pregnant wife Hseng Noung, whose photographs of Myanmar’s rugged northern terrain further enhance this incredible travelogue.
At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a…
Rory MacLean is one of Britain's most innovative travel writers. His books – which have been translated into a dozen languages — include UK top tens Stalin's Nose and Under the Dragon as well as Pravda Ha Ha and Berlin: Imagine a City, "the most extraordinary work of history I've ever read" according to the Washington Post which named it a "Book of the Year". Over the years he has travelled throughout Burma – apart from when banned by the military government for his writings – coming to know it as a deeply-wounded and fractured golden land of temple bells, be-medalled generals who enrich themselves through drug deals and ever-optimistic men and women who fight on to restore its ‘democratic transition’.
No surprise that George Orwell, author of the two defining parables of the 20th century, should be at the top of my list, especially as his five years in Burma attuned him to the suffering of the oppressed. More moving than ‘Burmese Days’ is his short story ‘A Hanging’ in which he watches a condemned criminal walk towards the gallows … and sidestep a puddle. In that fleeting moment Orwell marks the preciousness of human life and the heartlessness of power.
It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next…
