A book about sex everyone should read

Top Of The Stack

1 NON-FICTION

The direct, attention-grabbing title - which turns out to be much more complicated than it first appears - sets the tone for this necessary treatise of the modern age.

Oxford professor Amia Srinivasan trots out six essays on gender and sex of the highest quality - each one a joy to read and informed by the latest ideas.

From the dangers of pornography to interracial dating, she manages to capture in easy-flowing and concise prose the issues of the day.

Her fearlessness in engaging with touchy topics, usually avoided by progressives - including whether all people, no matter their sexuality, have a duty to examine whom they sleep with - makes her voice a real standout in a time of popular reckoning for gender relations not seen since the 1960s and 1970s.

From the outset, it is clear that she does not wish to only preach to the choir and is intent on persuading those who disagree.

Her first essay, The Conspiracy Against Men, begins with what looks like an affirmation of the fears of men paranoid about being falsely accused of rape in an #IBelieveHer climate.

In another essay, On Not Sleeping With Your Students, she writes: "The differences here, between the infatuation a student has for her professor, and the infatuation anyone has for anyone else, are a matter of degree, not kind.

"(The) question, as Freud shows us, isn't whether 'real' romantic love is possible in the pedagogical context, but whether real teaching is."

These are dangerous statements to make in the era of social media, where sentences are often shorn of their contexts. At one point in an essay, she has to take the time to respond to a Twitter user.

But follow her arguments to their not always definitive conclusions and it is clear that Srinivasan is not stoking controversy for its own sake.

She engages with conflicting evidence, ambiguities that cannot be easily resolved and then asks how these can be better reconciled and used to shore up ethical beliefs.

She asks: Should gay people be accepted only if sexuality is innate or should it also be legitimate if it is a considered choice? Are sexual preferences even ever innate, if they must be conditioned or are created by the politics of race, class and gender?

Ultimately, The Right To Sex is a critique of the system that does not exonerate individuals of their duty to override their impulses.

It examines instances of a simple claim - some feel entitled to sex, others are oppressed by it - and asks how one can attempt to reduce this power disparity without ending up hurting those who are already at the bottom of the hierarchy. Everyone should read it.

If you like this, read: Of Woman Born (W.W. Norton & Co, 1976, reissued 2021, $26.95, Books Kinokuniya). Poet and feminist Adrienne Rich draws on her own experiences to examine how motherhood is defined by patriarchal systems and political institutions.

2 MEMOIR

SIDESPLITTER

Wang, a British comedian who was born in Stoke-on-Trent, England, and raised in Malaysia, recounts his experience of growing up mixed-race in this book that is part-comic memoir, part-reflective essay.

3 FICTION

LEAN FALL STAND

Robert "Doc" Wright, a veteran of Antarctic field work, has a stroke while on duty at a remote research station, which has fatal consequences for someone else. In the aftermath, he tries to recover while his wife Anna is thrust into the role of reluctant caregiver.

McGregor, who has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times, weaves a quiet mystery of survival and sacrifice.

4 FICTION

THE WOMEN OF TROY

In 2018, Booker Prize-winning author Barker published the harrowing The Silence Of The Girls, which recounts the events of the Trojan War from the point of view of Briseis, a queen enslaved by Greek warrior Achilles.

Barker returns to this milieu in The Women Of Troy, set in the aftermath of Troy's fall as the Greeks divide the spoils and wait for a wind to carry them home at long last.

Briseis is now carrying Achilles' child and protected only by an arranged marriage with one of his warriors. She observes Achilles' hot-headed son Pyrrhus, who lives in his dead father's shadow.

5 THRILLER

NEVER SAW ME COMING

College freshman Chloe Sevre seems like your average girl next door - fun, flirty, cool to hang out with.

But she is in fact a highly intelligent psychopath who has manipulated her way into John Adams University, for the sole purpose of killing frat boy Will Bachman for a terrible thing he did during their childhood.

The problem is, she got a free ride at the college by agreeing to be part of its psychology department's secret clinical study of young psychopaths.

Someone on campus is now killing off the people in this programme and Chloe needs to figure out how to get away with murder without becoming a victim herself.

6 FICTION

THE SISTERS MAO

Three women prepare for two revolutionary performances on either side of the world. In London, sisters Iris and Eva, members of a Maoist performance collective, plot an attack on the West End theatre where their mother is playing the title role in August Strindberg's play Miss Julie.

In Beijing, Jiang Qing, wife of Chairman Mao Zedong, rehearses a gala performance of her ballet, The Red Detachment Of Women, which she intends as a sally against her enemies in the Chinese Communist Party.

Irish novelist McCrea weaves together the stories of these three women in this tale of art and communism.

7 FICTION

VELVET WAS THE NIGHT

In this noirish tale set in 1970s Mexico City, Maite, a daydreaming, unfulfilled secretary, loses herself in pulp romances and envies her beautiful neighbour, art student Leonora. When Leonora goes missing, Maite starts looking for her and is drawn into a complex web of student radicals and shadowy government agents. She crosses paths with Elvis, a reluctant criminal who loves old movies and rock 'n' roll.

8 NON-FICTION

THERE'S A WAR GOING ON BUT NO ONE CAN SEE IT

This Dutch bestseller, now translated into English, takes readers through the clandestine underworld of digital espionage. Journalist Modderkolk examines the key players of this invisible war, from whistle-blower Edward Snowden to Russian hacking group Cozy Bear to Evgeniy Bogachev, one of the most wanted cyber criminals in the world.

9 FICTION

THE SILENCE OF SCHEHERAZADE

On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient port city of Smyrna, gem of the Ottoman Empire. At the same moment, the dashing Indian spy Avinash Pillai arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British. When he leaves 17 years later, the city will be in flames.

Turkish author Suman's lush saga intertwines the fates of four families - Greek, Levantine, Turkish and Armenian - in a city now lost.

10 FICTION

POISON FOR BREAKFAST

Snicket, author of A Series Of Unfortunate Events (1999 to 2006), has eaten his breakfast - "tea/with honey,/a piece of toast/with cheese,/one sliced pear,/and an egg perfectly prepared" - when he receives a note under the door.

It reads: "You had poison for breakfast." So he embarks on a strange journey of philosophy and bewilderment to solve his own impending death.

This is, of course, a metafictional discursion by Daniel Handler, the American author behind the Snicket persona.