Cancerman to Ironman: A Police Officer’s Journey of Arresting Illness
By Nidhin Valsan
In this deeply personal memoir, Valsan recounts his experience – from the harrowing ordeal of seeking the right diagnosis and coming to terms with it, gruelling chemotherapy sessions in his home state of Kerala, to his momentous decision during rehabilitation to pursue an audacious goal: competing in the Ironman triathlon, one of the world’s most demanding endurance challenges. Despite daunting fears of relapse and a string of personal hurdles, he undergoes rigorous training and participates in the race in Goa within a year of his diagnosis, defying all odds and surpassing his own limits to ultimately become an Ironman.
Cancerman to Ironman is more than a tale of athletic triumph. Raw, revealing and strikingly candid, it unveils the heart behind Valsan’s battle, the support system that sustained him, and the mental and physical strategies that fuelled his perseverance – a testament to the resilience of the human spirit during life’s darkest days.
Witness
By Sakshi Malik with Jonathan Selvaraj
In December 2023, Sakshi Malik quit professional wrestling. She was India’s best-known female wrestler – the first and only female wrestler to win a medal at the Olympics – with fights both ongoing and ahead of her. It was an extraordinary gesture, a culmination of her and many other Indian wrestlers’ fight against the former President of the Wrestling Foundation of India (WFI), Brij Bhushan Singh.
No athlete ends their career when they could still be in the game. But Sakshi has always gone against the grain. In this fiery memoir, she tells her story from her childhood, her introduction to wrestling in Rohtak, her win at the Rio Olympics and her post-Olympics journey, her struggles and triumphs over injury and self-doubt and, finally, her most recent public battle with the administration of the WFI that has played out on the streets of New Delhi. Interspersed through her story are fascinating insights into the world of women’s wrestling in India – training, camp life, body image issues, dating, finances and what it takes to be an elite international wrestler.
My Beautiful Sisters: A Story of Courage, Hope and the Afghan Women’s Football Team
By Khalida Popal
August, 2021: Kabul falls to the Taliban.
Overnight, life for women across Afghanistan changes.
The national women’s football team faces an imminent threat to their lives, just for playing sport.
For Khalida Popal, the team’s first captain and co-founder, this is not an unprecedented event. Born in Afghanistan, she fled Taliban rule as a child with her family and grew up in a refugee camp in Pakistan. On her return to Afghanistan, football gave her and her teammates power, comradeship and freedom. But advocating for women’s rights in sport put Popal’s life increasingly at risk, forcing her to flee the country, this time alone.
My Beautiful Sisters is a gripping memoir about courage, the power of teamwork against all odds and the existence of hope in dark times.
The Day I Became a Runner: A Women’s History of India through the Lens of Sport
By Sohini Chattopadhyay
The Day I Became a Runner starts from a striking premise-that since running is a solitary activity conducted in the public sphere, women who take up this sport pose a more direct challenge to patriarchy than those who play sports such as badminton, cricket and tennis. To support this thesis, award-winning journalist Sohini Chattopadhyay presents the compelling stories of eight athletes spanning the entire history of independent India and involving women from various social and geographical backgrounds.
Each woman in this book will inspire and encourage the women reading it to break barriers and chase their dreams.
Written with remarkable insight and poignancy, The Day I Became a Runner is an alternative account of the Indian Republic chronicled through the lens of its women athletes. In that sense, it is a women’s history of India.
GRIT: The Vishwas Story
By Vishwas K.S., V.R. Ferose and Sriram Jagannathan
Para-Swimmer. Martial Artist. Dancer.
Vishwas dons many hats, and he dons them well.
At ten, when he loses his arms in a tragic accident, the sudden and debilitating limitations zap the light from his world. Things that required little to no effort are now traumatizing, challenging and downright impossible. Heartbreak insidiously colours Vishwas’s adolescence – every day a constant reminder of what could have been. But bright lights dot his gloomy skies. With the support and love he receives from his family, friends and coaches, he evolves into a formidable force.
Grit: The Vishwas Story is an illustrated ode to a man who surpasses unimaginable hardships and comes out the other end with integrity, optimism and gratitude. This powerful and tender tale will break your heart and put the pieces back together with a hopeful, life-affirming touch.
The Batmaker of Copenhagen: The Story of Cricket’s Second World War Hero
By Tim Brooks
The Batmaker of Copenhagen is the inspiring story of a cricketing hero who defied the German occupation to keep cricket alive throughout the Nazi occupation of Denmark during the Second World War.
With Copenhagen under the iron grip of the Gestapo, and German U-boats preventing any supplies coming in from England, a humble cricket scorer sets out on an improbable and dangerous quest to find willow and produce his own cricket bats.
Scouring the length and breadth of the country, hounded by Gestapo spies, and risking everything for the game he loves, the ‘Batmaker’ undertakes his mission under the very noses of the city’s oppressors.
Based on a true story, this uplifting tale of passion and patriotism brings cricket and espionage together in a unique and gripping thriller.
We Share the Sun: The Incredible Journey of Kenya’s Legendary Coach and the Fastest Runners on Earth
By Sarah Gearhart
An enlightening biography and inspiring and gripping sports narrative that takes us behind-the-scenes into the lives of some of the world’s most elite Kenyan runners and their coach, Patrick Sang
Fiercely Female: The Dutee Chand Story
By Sundeep Misra
Ace sprinter Dutee Chand is one of the most inspiring figures in Indian sport today. Through sheer grit and hard work, she overcame poverty and inadequate training and sporting culture to become one of India’s premier athletes. Then she battled prejudice and systemic injustice to win significant battles for gender equality. Her dream run abruptly stopped when the Athletics Federation of India unceremoniously dropped her from the 2014 Commonwealth Games on the charge that she was ineligible to compete as a female athlete. Chand took the fight to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, which suspended the ban on her by the Indian body as well as the International Association of Athletics Federations. Since then, Chand has chalked up several medals, including the 2019 gold in the Summer Universiade, Napoli, in the 100 metres category—the first Indian woman sprinter to win a gold at the event. Chand became the first Indian sportsperson to acknowledge being in a same-sex relationship openly. Fiercely Female is the story of a truly modern icon, a woman who defied powerful giants to carve her own success and live life on her terms.
Swimming Against the Tide
By Madhavi Latha Prathigudupu
Swimming Against the Tide is an inspirational story about an ordinary woman with extraordinary grit who set out to create a fair and inclusive world for the persons with disability. When she was seven months old, a massive polio attack left Madhavi paralyzed below the shoulder. But her parents refused to leave her to her fate. With their most powerful wealth―patience and love―they gave Madhavi the wings to set out and conquer the world on her own terms. Triumphing over a near-death situation with hydrotherapy, she eventually became a national champion in para swimming. She then started a movement called ‘Yes, We Too Can!!!’ and co-opted other athletes with disabilities to realize their dreams through access to sports. Banker, public speaker and National Para Swimming Champion with 30 medals for swimming at the state and national level, co-founder of the Paralympic Swimming Association of Tamil Nadu, the Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India and more, behind this stellar list of accolades is the story of a young girl from a sleepy little village who dared to dream and challenged her circumstances, determined to surge through ‘disability’, emerging a winner and becoming an inspiration to many.
Shuttling to the Top: The Story of P.V. Sindhu
By V. Krishnaswamy
Volleyball was the topic of conversation at breakfast and dinner table, but badminton player Pullela Gopichand was P. V. Sindhu’s hero. At a time when Saina Nehwal was a rising star, eight-year-old Sindhu would travel over 40 kilometres from her home in a railway colony in Secunderabad, every day, to get to Gopichand’s academy and train. Shuttling to the Top: The Story of P. V. Sindhu is the fascinating story of the junior player who went on to be the first Indian to win an Olympic silver medal for badminton.
