Author Guide · Nonfiction & Fiction
Books Written by
In 1983, three years after four armed men attacked her and a male friend in Bombay, a 20-year-old Brandeis student published her own account of the rape in the Delhi women’s magazine Manushi, under her own name. Almost thirty years later, after the fatal gang rape on a Delhi bus in December 2012, someone shared that article online and it spread again. Sohaila Abdulali followed it in January 2013 with an op-ed in The New York Times, and about a thousand people wrote to her. Between those two pieces she worked at a rape crisis centre in Boston, as a journalist and editor, and wrote two novels. This guide covers her three key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 3 key books · 1998–2018 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Sohaila Abdulali has published three books for adults: the novels The Madwoman of Jogare (1998) and Year of the Tiger (2010), and the nonfiction book What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape (2018), which appeared in the UK, US, India and Australia and has been translated into Dutch, Korean, Spanish and Turkish. Start with What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape; below is what each book covers and how she writes.
Where to Start with Sohaila Abdulali
If you want her best-known book
→ What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape (2018) — survivors’ stories and her own, on four continents.
If you want her fiction
→ The Madwoman of Jogare (1998) — her first novel, published by HarperCollins India.
If you want a novel set in New York
→ Year of the Tiger (2010).
3 Sohaila Abdulali Books, in Order
The Madwoman of Jogare
Her first novel, published by HarperCollins India in 1998 and described in her biographies as a bestseller. It is set in a village in western India where her parents lived and sold orchids. By 2018 it had gone out of print.
Year of the Tiger
Her second novel, published by Penguin and set in New York. Like her first novel, it is listed by her speaking agency as a bestseller.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape
It opens with her own account of the attack in Bombay in 1980, when she was 17, then widens to the stories of survivors she interviewed around the world, among them Yasmin El-Rifae, who helped rescue women from assaults during the Cairo protests. Chapters such as “Who Am I to Talk?”, “Teflon Man” and “What Did You Expect?” cover consent, rape as a political weapon, rape culture, anger and forgiveness. It was published in 2018 by Myriad Editions, The New Press and Penguin Random House India and Australia, and Publishers Weekly named it one of its best books of 2018.
In What Order to Read Sohaila Abdulali
Her three books are independent of each other, so read by interest rather than date. The two novels and the nonfiction book are different kinds of writing: the novels are fiction set in India and New York, and What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is reported, first-person nonfiction.
Most readers come to her through the 2018 book, and it is the easiest to find. The Madwoman of Jogare is out of print and is mainly available second-hand or in India.
A reading path
1. What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape (2018)
2. Year of the Tiger (2010)
3. The Madwoman of Jogare (1998)
The years · 1980–2018
Quick facts about Sohaila Abdulali
- Known for
- Writing openly, under her own name, about surviving rape, first in an Indian magazine in 1983 and again in The New York Times in 2013.
- 1980
- Attacked at 17, the summer before Brandeis
- 1983
- Her account appears in Manushi
- Born
- Bombay (now Mumbai), India; moved to the United States with her family at 15
- Education
- BA in economics and sociology, Brandeis University (1984); MA in communication, Stanford University
- Worked
- Boston Area Rape Crisis Center; journalist in Philadelphia, Boston and Bombay; Director of Communications at AIDS-Free World
- Other writing
- Children’s books on women’s health in India, funded by the Ford Foundation and published in four languages; a column for the Indian newspaper Mint
- Taught
- Adjunct professor of South Asian civilisation at New York University (2004 and 2008)
- Lives
- Manhattan’s Lower East Side, New York
The red mark is 2018: What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, her best-known book.
How Sohaila Abdulali Writes: Blunt, Conversational, Built on Other People’s Stories
Her nonfiction is first-person and plain-spoken, and it uses humour on a subject most writers approach only with solemnity. She told Publishers Weekly in 2018: “I’m not a terribly serious person, but this message is serious.” Chapter titles such as “Teflon Man” and “Totally Different, Exactly the Same” set that tone.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape began as a pitch for a memoir, which she turned down because, as she put it, the rape “isn’t the main thing in my life”. Instead her own story takes up the opening and the rest is built from interviews with survivors in many countries, including some of the roughly thousand people who wrote to her after the 2013 op-ed. She chose to interview people who had come to terms with what happened to them, and drew on her years of counselling at the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center.
Her argument runs against the idea that rape destroys a woman’s honour or her life. In the 2013 op-ed she wrote that rape is horrible but not “for all the reasons that have been drilled into the heads of Indian women”, and on the PBS NewsHour in 2019 she said survivors deserve to be seen as the same people they were before, “not broken beings”. The book asks questions and leaves many of them open.
Watch
Sohaila Abdulali on talking about rape
Jeffrey Brown talks with Abdulali for the PBS NewsHour in January 2019 about What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, consent, silence and what survivors need.
Frequently asked questions about Sohaila Abdulali’s books
How many books has Sohaila Abdulali written?
Three books for adults: two novels, The Madwoman of Jogare (1998) and Year of the Tiger (2010), and the nonfiction book What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape (2018). She has also written children’s books on women’s health in India, short stories and many articles.
What are Sohaila Abdulali’s books in order?
The Madwoman of Jogare (1998), Year of the Tiger (2010) and What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape (2018).
Where should I start with Sohaila Abdulali?
With What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape (2018). It is her best-known and most widely available book, and it opens with her own story before turning to other survivors.
What is Sohaila Abdulali’s most famous book?
What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape (2018). It was published in the UK, US, India and Australia, translated into Dutch, Korean, Spanish and Turkish, and named one of the best books of 2018 by Publishers Weekly.
Is What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape a memoir?
Not mainly. Her own account opens the book, but most of it is built from interviews with other survivors and from her work as a counsellor, covering consent, rape as a political weapon, rape culture, anger and forgiveness.
What did Sohaila Abdulali write in Manushi?
In 1983, while back in India researching her undergraduate thesis on rape, she published an account of her own rape in 1980 in the Delhi women’s magazine Manushi, under her own name and with her photograph. It challenged the shame and silence expected of survivors in India.
What was Sohaila Abdulali’s New York Times op-ed?
After the fatal gang rape on a bus in Delhi in December 2012, her Manushi article circulated widely online. In January 2013 The New York Times published her op-ed “After Being Raped, I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t”. She has said about a thousand people wrote to her afterwards.
Is What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape available in Dutch?
Yes. Dutch is one of the languages it has been translated into, alongside Korean, Spanish and Turkish.
Where does Sohaila Abdulali live?
In New York, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, with her family. She was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) and has moved between India and the United States since her teens.
Footnotes
- Taken by Force — Brandeis Magazine, 2019
- Sohaila Abdulali tells stories of survivors — Publishers Weekly, 2018
- After her own rape, author says victims are more than broken beings — PBS NewsHour, 2019
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape — Myriad Editions
- Sohaila Abdulali — Women’s Activism NYC
- Sohaila Abdulali — Keppler Speakers
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Rape is horrible. But it is not horrible for all the reasons that have been drilled into the heads of Indian women.”
— Sohaila Abdulali, “After Being Raped, I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t”, The New York Times (2013)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations