Best non-fiction books 2017 – the list so far
Some of us are recent converts to non-fiction, and we feel rather zealous about it. Contrary to what we thought, non-fiction shouldn't remind you of school. You shouldn't struggle through it or only have it on your shelf for showing off.
No, it should be un-putdownable, life changing. You should want to press these pages into your friend's hands, into stranger's hands, rearrange your local bookshops' shelves and start Twitter-stalking the authors.
All this madness awaits: first you have to read our pick of the best non-fiction of 2017.
Click through our gallery to see them all.
Nobel-prize winning journalist and author, Svetlana Alexievich lived in the Soviet Union and published her first book – a collection of testimonials about women in the second world war, in 1985.
This book has been a long time coming. Suppressed by the Soviet Regime when it was first written, it was finally published in English this year.
A difficult, intellectual read, clouded with unreliable narration and censorship, it's still fascinating to hear the voices of snipers and housewives, nurses coping in male dominated environments, women worn down by the constant shortages of female sanitary supplies, and husbands and wives going to war together.
