Love Midnight's Borders? Readers share 100 books like Midnight's Borders...

By Suchitra Vijayan,

Here are 100 books that Midnight's Borders fans have personally recommended if you like Midnight's Borders. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories

Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan Author Of The Origin Story of India's States

From my list on discovering a modern India you’ve never seen.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by maps all my life. The map of India has always held special interest. As I’ve lived in different parts of India, I’ve seen firsthand how India is one country, but its stories are multiple. I chronicled India’s varied stories through the origins of each of its states. Similarly, I’ve curated a diverse and inclusive reading list. It covers different parts of the country and contains different types of books—graphic novel, travelog, memoir, and short story collections. The authors also cut across religion, gender, and social strata. I hope you discover a whole new India!

Venkataraghavan's book list on discovering a modern India you’ve never seen

Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan Why did Venkataraghavan love this book?

I love how this short story collection traverses time but not locationthe setting is the northeastern state of Meghalaya while the stories span 150 years. In these fifteen tales, folklore mixes with modern life and myth is steeped in the mundane. The result? The reader journeys through a rich smorgasbord of a multi-faceted Meghalaya and its people. Given the tendency to clump the seven northeastern states together, this book helps us view one of those states distinctively.

By Janice Pariat,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Boats on Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Boats on Land is a unique way of looking at India’s northeast and its people against a larger historical canvas—the early days of the British Raj, the World Wars, conversions to Christianity, and the missionaries. This is a world in which the everyday is infused with folklore and a deep belief in the supernatural. Here, a girl dreams of being a firebird. An artist watches souls turn into trees. A man shape-shifts into a tiger. Another is bewitched by water fairies. Political struggles and social unrest interweave with fireside tales and age-old superstitions. Boats on Land quietly captures our fragile…


Book cover of The Adivasi Will Not Dance

Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan Author Of The Origin Story of India's States

From my list on discovering a modern India you’ve never seen.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by maps all my life. The map of India has always held special interest. As I’ve lived in different parts of India, I’ve seen firsthand how India is one country, but its stories are multiple. I chronicled India’s varied stories through the origins of each of its states. Similarly, I’ve curated a diverse and inclusive reading list. It covers different parts of the country and contains different types of books—graphic novel, travelog, memoir, and short story collections. The authors also cut across religion, gender, and social strata. I hope you discover a whole new India!

Venkataraghavan's book list on discovering a modern India you’ve never seen

Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan Why did Venkataraghavan love this book?

This book of short stories drops us in the middle of Jharkhand in the center of India. Written by a government doctor who is also of the Santhal Adivasi community, it offers us insights into a community, a region, and an institution that are rarely found together in a book. Also, given that central India can tend to be seen as a large Hindi land mass, this book focuses sharply on the region’s original inhabitants living in today’s society.

By Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Adivasi Will Not Dance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Please Read Notes: Brand New, International Softcover Edition, Printed in black and white pages, minor self wear on the cover or pages, Sale restriction may be printed on the book, but Book name, contents, and author are exactly same as Hardcover Edition. Fast delivery through DHL/FedEx express.


Book cover of Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India

Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan Author Of The Origin Story of India's States

From my list on discovering a modern India you’ve never seen.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by maps all my life. The map of India has always held special interest. As I’ve lived in different parts of India, I’ve seen firsthand how India is one country, but its stories are multiple. I chronicled India’s varied stories through the origins of each of its states. Similarly, I’ve curated a diverse and inclusive reading list. It covers different parts of the country and contains different types of books—graphic novel, travelog, memoir, and short story collections. The authors also cut across religion, gender, and social strata. I hope you discover a whole new India!

Venkataraghavan's book list on discovering a modern India you’ve never seen

Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan Why did Venkataraghavan love this book?

We learn about our family and our place in the world through the stories our older generations tell us. This is such a memoirnot about the author but about her (famous) uncle and mother. To me, it has the feel of numerous family gatherings where old stories are dredged up and the youngsters listen with wide eyes and keen ears of a time before their time. Situated deep in the Telugu hinterland in the south, this memoir presents an intimate personal narrative layered with the communist and caste politics of the first decades after Independence.

By Sujatha Gidla,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ants Among Elephants as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2017
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017
A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2017

"Ants Among Elephants is an arresting, affecting and ultimately enlightening memoir. It is quite possibly the most striking work of non-fiction set in India since Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, and heralds the arrival of a formidable new writer." —The Economist

The stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary

Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables…


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir

Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan Author Of The Origin Story of India's States

From my list on discovering a modern India you’ve never seen.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by maps all my life. The map of India has always held special interest. As I’ve lived in different parts of India, I’ve seen firsthand how India is one country, but its stories are multiple. I chronicled India’s varied stories through the origins of each of its states. Similarly, I’ve curated a diverse and inclusive reading list. It covers different parts of the country and contains different types of books—graphic novel, travelog, memoir, and short story collections. The authors also cut across religion, gender, and social strata. I hope you discover a whole new India!

Venkataraghavan's book list on discovering a modern India you’ve never seen

Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan Why did Venkataraghavan love this book?

With a Persepolis meets Maus approach, this graphic novel visually takes us into the daily life that locals live in Kashmir, the most militarized zone in the world. This ground-up storytelling is intimate and powerful, as it takes us behind the propaganda and gives us the insider’s view in explosive, insightful, and humorous ways. Images may be more powerful than words, and this book has haunting images that will linger long after you finish the last page.

By Malik Sajad,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Munnu as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A beautifully drawn graphic novel that illuminates the conflicted land of Kashmir, through a young boy's childhood.

Seven-year-old Munnu is growing up in Indian-administered Kashmir. Life revolves around his family: Mama, Papa, sister Shahnaz, brothers Adil and Akhtar and, his favourite, older brother Bilal. It also revolves around Munnu's two favourite things - sugar and drawing.

But Munnu's is a childhood experienced against the backdrop of conflict. Bilal's classmates are crossing over into the Pakistan-administered portion of Kashmir to be trained to resist the 'occupation'; Papa and Bilal are regularly taken by the military to identification parades where informers will…


Book cover of The New Border Wars: The Conflicts That Will Define Our Future

Alexander Diener Author Of Borders: A Very Short Introduction

From my list on 21st century borders.

Why am I passionate about this?

Beyond my fascination with borders as historical sites of conflict and shifting markers of control, I’ve spent an academic career studying the simultaneity of barrier and juncture. This research has led me to witness licit and illicit border crossings, refugee camps, commercial ports, smuggling, and conservation through cloistering. In my travels, I’ve perceived my vulnerability at certain borders and ease of passage at others. All of this afforded me insights into the human division and demarcation of space and resulted in books and articles on varied facets of bordering in the hope that I might contribute to inhibiting the bad and facilitating the good where territories meet.  

Alexander's book list on 21st century borders

Alexander Diener Why did Alexander love this book?

I found this book eminently readable. It’s like a story about borders, offering vivid portrayals of real conflictual political geographies. Dodds makes clear that borders play political, social, economic, and environmental roles that must be considered for any prospect of peace in the future.

This is the sort of book that educated readers, from college students to international jet setters, would find enlightening as to borders’ breadth of relevance in the 21st Century.

By Klaus Dodds,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The New Border Wars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A thrilling insight into international geopolitics by one of the world’s leading experts, examining the past, future, and present meaning of borders from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, Palestine to Pakistan, North Korea to Trump’s Wall, and beyond

What do the world’s best-known, most dangerous, and most unexpected border conflicts mean for our changing international relationships?

In The New Border Wars, border expert Klaus Dodds journeys into the geopolitical clashes of tomorrow in an eye-opening tour of border walls―literal and figurative―from the Gaza Strip to the space race. In the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere, the tension…


Book cover of Boundaries Undermined: the Ruins of Progress on the Bangladesh/India Border

Sayeed Ferdous Author Of Partition as Border-Making: East Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh

From my list on South Asian history and culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I teach anthropology but find my niche in the blurred zone of history and anthropology. My research interests include South Asian Studies; Historiography; Memory/Forgetting, and Postcolonial Nation, State, and Nationalism. My book Partition as Border-Making draws upon ethnographic details, using oral historical accounts from the Bengal borderland and archival materials. Focusing upon the significance of the mundane in history and its presentness, this research contributes to understanding postcolonial South Asia beyond “indocentrism.” At present, I am co-editing a Bangladesh Reader. In 2021, I jointly conducted a research project on the Partition migrants to Dhaka in partnership with Goethe Institute, Bangladesh.

Sayeed's book list on South Asian history and culture

Sayeed Ferdous Why did Sayeed love this book?

Delwar Hussein, an anthropologist, conducted his research along the north-eastern borderline of Bangladesh. He has been fascinating in depicting the transformation of the borderland from a site of evolving nation-states to the catchment area of cross-border neoliberal capitalism.

Hussein crafted the minute details of how the cement factory had changed the communities, lives, and livelihoods at that margin. The marginality of the Borderlanders is central in this work; however, as often, Borderland studies surprise us, this book also talks about opportunities and hopes. It would enable its readers to look into the postcolonial nation-states with an unorthodox approach.

By Delwar Hussain,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Boundaries Undermined as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When anthropologist Delwar Hussain arrived in a remote coal mining village on the Bangladesh/India border to research the security fence India is building around its neighbour, he discovered more about the globalised world than he had expected. The present narrative of the Bangladesh/ India border is one of increasing violence. Not so long ago, it was the site of a monumental modernist master-plan, symbolic of a larger optimism which was to revolutionise post-colonial nations around the world. Today this vision and what it gave rise to lies in spectacular ruin; the innards of the decomposing industrial past are scattered across…


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Book cover of The Bangalore Detectives Club

The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra,

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The first in a charming, joyful crime series set in 1920s Bangalore, featuring sari-wearing detective Kaveri and her husband Ramu.

When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young doctor Ramu, she's resigned herself to a quiet life. But…

Book cover of Thinking Europe: A History of the European Idea since 1800

Caner Tekin Author Of Debating Turkey in Europe: Identities and Concepts

From my list on European identity for history readers.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a postdoctoral researcher, I'm fascinated by the notions of cultural belonging to Europe and European nation-states, as they have evolved throughout history in relation to what the holders of these notions call their "others". I know of few cases in the field of identity and memory politics that are as controversial, as curious, as fragile, and yet as fascinating as the idea of a Europe, a social and political construct that emerges from past events but is shaped for political purposes. Debates about a common European history and memory are intertwined with those about the geographical and cultural definitions of Europe, and my book list often includes the most recent examples of these interactions.

Caner's book list on European identity for history readers

Caner Tekin Why did Caner love this book?

My first point of concern is the fact that ideas and concepts are historical products altered in time.

In his book, Professor Andrén provides a historical context for the ideas of Europe and their sources that have emerged over the last two centuries. He neatly shows the historicity of the thoughts as constructs linked to the regional and global conditions of their time.

He highlights the visions of Europe in the 19th century marked by revolutions and unifications; in the first half of the 20th century, marked by wars and crises. He then examines the visions in the second half of the century characterized by the search for peace and prosperity, European integration and a pan-European identity.

Let us navigate from Andrén's point of view that ideas about Europe did not die out, but evolved into more current constructs in modern European history.

By Mats Andrén,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Thinking Europe as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Presenting a new historical narrative on European integration and identity this title examines how the concept of Europe has been entangled in a dynamic and dramatic tension between calls for unity and arguments for borders and division. Through an in-depth intellectual history of the idea of Europe, Mats Andren interrogates the concept of integration and more recent debates surrounding European identity across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the post-war period. Applying a broad range of original sources this unique work will be key reading for students and researchers studying European History, European Studies, Political History and related fields.


Book cover of Nationalism in Central Asia: A Biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary

Alexander Diener Author Of Borders: A Very Short Introduction

From my list on 21st century borders.

Why am I passionate about this?

Beyond my fascination with borders as historical sites of conflict and shifting markers of control, I’ve spent an academic career studying the simultaneity of barrier and juncture. This research has led me to witness licit and illicit border crossings, refugee camps, commercial ports, smuggling, and conservation through cloistering. In my travels, I’ve perceived my vulnerability at certain borders and ease of passage at others. All of this afforded me insights into the human division and demarcation of space and resulted in books and articles on varied facets of bordering in the hope that I might contribute to inhibiting the bad and facilitating the good where territories meet.  

Alexander's book list on 21st century borders

Alexander Diener Why did Alexander love this book?

While somewhat of a departure from my prior favorites in scope, I love this book because it is a deep dive into a specific stretch of border in 21st-century Central Asia. Though most may be unfamiliar with the myriad complexities at the juncture of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Nick Megoran’s ethnographic treatment offers a window into how borders in the 21st century are lived with and through.

This is because changing a border’s porosity alters the routes, businesses, educational opportunities, and relationships of people on both sides and beyond. Megoran’s book puts you on that border and compels you to think about how the decisions made in capital cities radically affect the citizens at the margins of state territories. 

By Nick Megoran,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Nationalism in Central Asia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nick Megoran explores the process of building independent nation-states in post-Soviet Central Asia through the lens of the disputed border territory between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. In his rich "biography" of the boundary, he employs a combination of political, cultural, historical, ethnographic, and geographic frames to shed new light on nation-building process in this volatile and geopolitically significant region. Megoran draws on twenty years of extensive research in the borderlands via interviews, observations, participation, and newspaper analysis. He considers the problems of nationalist discourse versus local vernacular, elite struggles versus borderland solidarities, boundary delimitation versus everyday experience, border control versus resistance,…


Book cover of The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia

James Borton Author Of Dispatches from the South China Sea: Navigating to Common Ground

From my list on dive deeply into the South China Sea territorial disputes.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a writer and waterman, I have traversed the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, setting crab pots and communing with fellow watermen who share a deep love for the estuary. I honor their livelihoods by responsibly harvesting blue crabs and oysters. My field notes have taken me beyond the Chesapeake, onto Hilton Head shrimping boats, onto the oyster beds in Bull's Bay in South Carolina, and into the contested South China Sea aboard Vietnamese fishing trawlers.

James' book list on dive deeply into the South China Sea territorial disputes

James Borton Why did James love this book?

Bill Hayton’s book helped guide me into this theme of the significant value and importance of the South China Sea. He offered a comprehensive historical narrative of the region from ancient times to the early 2010s while scrupulously outlining the territorial disputes and power struggles it has fostered.

His use of academic sources and journalistic articles was most readable. As a journalist, I welcomed his non-wonkish writing style and digressions on key actors in the unfolding dramas playing out in real-time on the ocean. I also met the author at several South China Sea conferences, and his open style and manner reflected in person were also present in his narrative. 

By Bill Hayton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The South China Sea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Why the world can't afford to be indifferent to the simmering conflict in the South China Sea

"The greatest risk today in U.S.-Chinese relations is the South China Sea, through which passes 40% of world trade. . . . Hayton explains how this all came about and points to the growing risks of miscalculation and escalation."-Daniel Yergin, Wall Street Journal

China's rise has upset the global balance of power, and the first place to feel the strain is Beijing's back yard: the South China Sea. For decades tensions have smoldered in the region, but today the threat of a direct…


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Book cover of Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World

Harry and Arthur by Lawrence J. Haas,

With Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Vice President Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican leader on foreign policy, inherited a world in turmoil. With Europe flattened and the Soviets emerging as America’s new adversary, Truman and Vandenberg built a tight, bipartisan partnership at a bitterly partisan time…

Book cover of Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes

Colin Mooers Author Of Imperial Subjects: Citizenship in an Age of Crisis and Empire

From my list on reader-friendly books imperialism and colonialism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. I have taught and written on political theory and cultural studies for over thirty years, specializing in theories of capitalism and imperialism. However, my main motivation for writing the books and articles I have published has had more to do with my life-long commitment to progressive social change and the political movements that can bring that change about. First and foremost, I have tried to make sometimes challenging theoretical and political concepts accessible to the informed reader and especially to those on the front lines of progressive political and social movements.

Colin's book list on reader-friendly books imperialism and colonialism

Colin Mooers Why did Colin love this book?

In an age when statues commemorating former colonialists and slave owners have been toppled worldwide, the figure of Winston Churchill has been left largely untouched. Myth-making around Churchill’s role in defeating Hitler is surely part of the explanation: no less than sixteen feature films have been made about his supposed historical achievements, three of them in the past decade.

As Tariq Ali points out in this informative book, “Churchill has become a highly burnished icon whose cult has long been out of control.” Yet, during the 1930s, as fascism ascended throughout continental Europe, Churchill was a fanboy of the far-right. Like many of his social class, Churchill admired fascism for its capacity to keep communism in check. Until 1937, his “support for Mussolini was effusive, his hopes for Franco outlasted the war, and, for some years, he was impressed by Hitler and the sturdy, patriotic Hitler youth.” “Imperialism,” Ali argues,…

By Tariq Ali,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Winston Churchill as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The subject of numerous biographies and history books, Winston Churchill has been repeatedly voted as one of the greatest of Englishmen. Even today, Boris Johnson in his failing attempts to be magisterial, has adopted many of his hero's mannerism! And, as Tariq Ali agrees, Churchill was undoubtedly right in 1940-41 to refuse to capitulate to fascism. However, he was also one of the staunchest defenders of empire and of Britain's imperial doctrine.

In this coruscating biography, Tariq Ali challenges Churchill's vaulted record. Throughout his long career as journalist, adventurer, MP, military leader, statesman, and historian, nationalist self belief influenced Churchill's…


Book cover of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories
Book cover of The Adivasi Will Not Dance
Book cover of Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India

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