The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies

The Soviet Union was the world's first communist country and lasted around seven decades. It played a key role in defeating Nazism in Europe and became a global superpower before collapsing unexpectedly in 1991. Sheila Fitzpatrick, a leading historian of the Soviet Union, recommends books that bring to life different aspects of it, from forced labour in Glavnoye Upravleniye LAGerey (GULAG) to the heady days of the Khrushchev thaw and including the memoir of Stalin's beloved daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva.

The last year has been one of the best for autobiography and memoir in recent memory, says May-lee Chai, chair of the judging committee for the National Book Critic Circle Prize for Autobiography. Their 2025 shortlist includes a posthumous memoir by Alexei Navalny, former leader of the opposition in Russia, and a travel memoir with a surrealist twist.

Whether you fancy a quality sports autobiography or an artfully-illustrated graphic narrative, we've got suggestions for you. Here, we've put together a concise round-up of the award-winning memoirs of 2024 to help you find highly-acclaimed new books you might otherwise have missed.

Our teenage years are often fraught with emotion, experimentation and the crises that arise with the coming of age. Here, the novelist and memoirist Tyler Wetherall discusses the memoirs of girlhood in which she found echoes of her own experiences—and perhaps you will too.

It's been a "phenomenal" year for autobiographical writing, says May-lee Chai—the award-winning author and chair of the judges for this year's National Book Critics Circle prize for autobiography. Here she offers us a tour of the five memoirs that made their 2024 shortlist.

A successful sense of place is the most satisfying part of any book, argues American journalist and humorist Calvin Trillin. He picks out five of his favourite memoirs — and says that part of what he likes about them is that they're short.

The author and recovering addict Matt Rowland Hill dissects the 'addiction memoir'—its literary potential, its formal conventions and its offer of hope and catharsis—as he recommends five books that exemplify the form, from Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater to Mary Karr's bestselling Lit.

Accounts of journeys on foot capture the imagination; partly this is a function of the satisfaction of following a linear journey from start to finish, and partly it is a quality inherent to walking itself—a freeing of the mind. Gail Simmons, who follows an old English pilgrimage route in her book Between the Chalk and the Sea, selects five hiking memoirs that celebrate the liberation that comes from putting one foot after another.

Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn selects the best recent autobiographical writing in this round-up of notable memoirs of 2023—taking in new work from such literary giants as Janet Malcolm and Annie Ernaux, the writer other writers are raving about, and a humorous debut depicting life in a haunted antiquarian bookshop.

More than 100 years after the Armenian genocide, author Tom de Waal chooses books that sidestep the politics and bring us back to the human story. He picks the best memoirs of the Armenian genocide.