A Stranger Truth: Lessons in Love, Leadership and Courage from India’s Sex Workers

Ashok Alexander

After spending a decade running Avahan, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s HIV/AIDS prevention programme in India, Ashok Alexander reflects on his experiences working with sex workers. Focussing on the gendered violence and anxiety that underpins the community’s daily existence, he recounts the vulnerability of the LGBTQ community to being pushed into sex work, the ordeals that lead to women selling themselves for a pittance and 14-year-olds injecting drugs, and the possibility of finding love and acceptance in the unlikeliest of places.

Juggernaut, 320 pages, Rs 699