The Best of 2024: Non Fiction
We’re continuing our round-up of our favourite reads of the year gone by with non-fiction selections that range from memoirs to narrative nonfiction to historical biographies and various other things that might be even harder to categorise.
Salman Rushdie - Knife
An obvious choice, perhaps, but this reflective and thoughtful autobiographical book by the Salman Rushdie recounts the stabbing attack on Rushdie in 2022. A meditation on life, love, art and violence, as well as many other things, it’s an ode to endurance and a reflection of culture today.
Sloane Crosley - Grief is For People
Following a break-in to her apartment and the suicide of a close friend, Grief is for People is more than just a grief memoir. Crosley's search for truth is frank, darkly funny, and gilded with a resounding empathy. This is also a deeply moving and surprisingly suspenseful portrait of friendship and category-defying story of the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it.
Hanif Abdurraqib - There’s Always This Year
Growing up in Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged - and countless others weren’t. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, the very notion of role models, and much more.
Emily Witt - Health and Safety: A Breakdown
A lament for a broken relationship, for a changed nightlife scene, and for New York City just before the pandemic, Emily Witt’s Health and Safety is one of the year’s most absorbing reads. Witt worked as a journalist by day, covering gun violence, climate catastrophes, and the rallies of right-wing militias. By night, she pushed the limits of consciousness in hollowed-out office spaces and warehouses of the dance music underground. Health and Safety chronicles that turbulent time with verve and depth.
John Ganz - When The Clock Broke
A political book but atypically one that forges deep and thoughtful connections, Ganz’ When the Clock Broke is an account of recent American history. Much has been said about how the present political landscape in the US — with its Trumpian lies, QAnon conspiracies, racist violence, anti-government violence from the far right, and so on — is ‘unprecedented’. But John Ganz demonstrates plenty of precedence in this book, drawing from many strands of recent history.
Richard Flanagan - Question 7
Blending memoir, history and auto-fiction, this brilliantly unique book by Booker winner Flanagan won the Baillie Gifford Prize. It’s hard to categorise but has been described as ‘a treatise on the immeasurability of life’, ‘a hypnotic melding of dream, history, science, and memory’, and an account of the stories of ourselves and those around us. It’s a brilliant achievement and worth reading.
Lili Anolik - Didion and Babitz
Using the rediscovered archives of one of the past century’s most lauded and provocative women writers, journalist Lili Anolik creates a profile of a complicated friendship turned bad. This is a book about two literary titans of late century America - Joan Didion and Eve Babitz. Highlighting their mutual attractions, antipathies, and more, this is a book that captures the heady late sixties and seventies in California with genuine insight.