Top 16 Books About Freedom Updated 04 /2024

Authors like Orwell and Woolf have shown us how important it is to have personal and political freedoms. They have also shown us how to fight for and enjoy them.

In Braveheart, Mel Gibson has blue paint on his face when he says "Freedom." If you can, get rid of that picture. The next picture that comes to mind might be Saltires in George Square, as Scotland debated independence in September 2014. The words could make you think of an empty glen with a wide blue sky, a majestic stag on a distant purple mountain, or an open road to walk on.

All these images came together when I wrote my book Rise. I wanted Braveheart to ride a deer through the shopping area of Sauchiehall Street on a leash. You can see the picture, but it's not quite right. With Rise, I wanted to mix the ancient and the modern, and I wanted to capture a wave of history in Scotland. I set it in Argyll, where there are a lot of standing stones. What I didn't know at the time was that a wave can start a big change in the world, which still shapes and redefines today.

A young woman named Justine is fleeing the city to start a new life somewhere else – anywhere but the city will do. Rise starts with Justine and her new life. She doesn't care about politics at all; she thinks "normal people" don't either. Life has taught her not to care too much about any place or thing. Then, when she hides out in a small town, she realizes that it's much more difficult to stay hidden than in a big city. During a time when a country is taking stock of itself, looking at the layers of its history and the blank pages of its future, everything is open to question. Justine starts to think about freedom not as a way to get away, but as a way to live in a way that's true to herself.

The following are some of the books that I think Justine might have taken on her trip:

Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

An old story in Scotland about Chris Guthrie, a dog from the Mearns of Kinraddie, is one of the most well-known. Chris is both a person and a symbol for Scotland. She's a bright and passionate girl who can't live the life she wants because of her family's circumstances. She's also a person who can't live the life she wants because of her family's circumstances.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

This is another one of the classics. But classics are classics for a good reason. If you could live in a world where you couldn't think, speak, or move freely, how would you feel? Imagine what it would be like if Big Brother, state surveillance, doublethink, and doublespeak were all real. Wait a second. It's a good thing that we still have the Human Rights Act, though. For now, though.

Joseph Knight by James Robertson

"No one is by nature the owner of another person," he says. In Knight v Wedderburn, that was how things worked out. In this book, Joseph Knight tells the true story of an 18th-century African who was brought to Scotland as a slave. He also talks about a court case that found that slavery wasn't legal in Scotland at the time, so it wasn't legal there. It's easy to see how Robertson weaves historical facts into powerful stories.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

When you have four walls and a closed door, it may be the most freeing thing. Woolf says that in order to be intellectually free, you also need to be financially and emotionally independent. Woolf has a wonderful, wide-ranging look at what it takes to be a writer – and, God forbid, a woman. She loops and soars through gardens, libraries, and gleaming ivory towers, flitting in and out of the minds of people like the Four Marys and Shakespeare's sister.

How to Be Both by Ali Smith

There are two stories here: one about a modern girl who has lost her mother, and another about a 15th-century Italian artist who has been forgotten. surface or depth; what we see or how we feel comes first. Smith plays with language and time to see which comes first. Smith bends genders and pushes the boundaries of liberation so much that she frees the novel form itself, making it completely up to which story comes first and which ending comes last. Finally,

The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink

If you love someone, free them. One of the most moving and honest stories I've ever read about how hard the writer and her family had to go through after her brother got seriously hurt in a car accident. Deeply moving but not at all mawkish, this is how it should be:

Germinal by Émile Zola

I read this in English at school when I should have been reading it in French. My bad French makes me happy. In Zola's book, he writes about how every animal has the instinct to get out of traps in a way that is both vivid and humane. This has stuck with me. People in 19th-century France are the subject of this story. It's like the earth is pulling you down, roots are pulling you down, and seeds are pushing for the sun.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

In this meditation on the freedom of the open road, we also see how your mind is free to wander to new and beautiful places when you're doing something repetitive and mindless, like riding a bike. Having just started running again, I can relate to the feeling of plodding along with a few bursts of joy. I love how Murakami uses this to think about his creative philosophy and the rhythms of his own writing life.

Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky

When the Nazis took over, this woman lost her voice but her work lives on in an unfinished masterpiece. The book is set in occupied France. There can't be a better or more powerful way to show how important it is to be able to speak your mind.

The Poor Had No Lawyers by Andy Wightman

Iain Machhirter's Disunited Kingdom, Lesley Riddoch's Blossom, and Common Weal's Book of Ideas are just three of the new political classics that have come out of the independence referendum. The book The Poor Had No Lawyers, which explains why so many acres of common land are in private and often unaccountable hands, is a bible for the land reform movement and shows how people in Scotland are interested in learning more. Repeatedly, the same question is being asked: who has the power, and how is it used?

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