Noor's top three of 2024

December is here and it's time to round up the Lighthouse team's favourite books of 2023! As usual, the brief is simple but strict (although there are those who find creative ways of expanding it…): three books you read, although they may not necessarily have been published, this year. The publishing schedule is swift and unforgiving and we also want to share the love with all those older books we fell in love with in 2024.

It's Noor's turn for a round-up:

Okay, let’s be honest, two of the three books below are not the cheeriest for the festive season, but I can say with all honesty that they have had a pretty big impact on me and my thinking this year.

Hostile Homelands by Azad Essa - This book was pretty eye-opening to me, particularly given the genocide in Palestine and the rising oppression and crackdowns in Kashmir. Sometimes I can see that things look similar but I can’t verify that situations really are connected. Helpfully, Essa has researched and laid out how India and Israel have helped one another diplomatically, monetarily, politically, and with weapons, to oppress the populations of Kashmir and Palestine. He recounts the key moments in history when India and Israel learnt from one another' s industries, media, policies, and state violence, to further their ethnostate aims. Just like solidarity is global, so is violence - and learning about the alliances between oppressive states helps to recognise the tactics that they use.

The Nation of Plants by Stefano Mancuso - I loved this book. It is short, so easy to read, and so inspiring. Each chapter is a bill in the Bill of Rights of the Nation of Plants. Frankly, the Nation of Plants (which would be worldwide) sounds better than any nation I have been to. Borders? No. Clean air, water, and environment? Yes, absolutely. Prioritising the health of the planet and those that live on it? Again, yes, correct. Mancuso’s way of writing is engaging, fun, and full of well explained research that make it make sense to believe that we can achieve many healthier, safer, better ways of living if only we recognise that the plants that we need to protect in a time of climate change, will save us in return.

Human Acts by Han Kang - Listen, I don’t recommend this book lightly. It is so well-written that it’s honestly difficult to read. Han Kang has written this slim but devastating novel based on the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980. Each chapter is from the perspective of a different character who experienced this time when the military dictatorship massacred civilians protesting martial law. They are all connected by their connection to Kang Dong Ho, a young boy who touched the hearts of many, and is in turn searching for his friend who disappeared in the fray. The book stares right into the darkest parts of human violence and doesn’t try to turn away, and frankly reading that was an education in the power of what fiction can do and make a reader feel. If Han Kang had won the Nobel Prize for Literature just for this book, I would have understood

Find more top three lists of 2024 from the team HERE