I Am Malala

The Winner in the Wrong Category

The Nobel Prize in Literature has gone to some pretty heavy hitters (think Alice Munro and Toni Morrison), but this year the Nobel Peace Prize winner also happens to be an author, whose memoir every American woman should read. The book's subtitle explains the main events of the painfully true story (The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban), but there are other compelling—and illuminating—reasons to pick up the book, such as the complex history of Pakistan, as lived by a seemingly ordinary family, and the relationship between a father and a daughter, both heroes for education and freedom in their own right.