Quick Take
- Narration: Soneela Nankani’s voice brings warmth and intelligence to Hankir’s globe-spanning text, an ideal pairing for material that moves between cultures with ease.
- Themes: Beauty as cultural power, identity and self-expression across civilizations, reclaiming feminine histories
- Mood: Curious and richly layered, like following an expert guide through a museum you’ve never properly visited
- Verdict: Hankir has written something genuinely surprising, a book about eyeliner that turns out to be about everything.
I picked up Eyeliner expecting to enjoy it mildly, a cultural history of a cosmetic product, nicely researched, reasonably well-argued. I did not expect to spend a Sunday afternoon completely absorbed in it, repeatedly setting down other things I needed to do. Zahra Hankir has written a book that uses eyeliner as a lens through which to examine human civilization, and the view through that lens is unexpectedly comprehensive.
The premise is simple: from ancient Egypt to present-day Instagram, humans have been lining their eyes, across virtually every culture and every century. Hankir asks why, and pursues the answer with what NPR called “rigorously researched” and “winding” dedication, through nomads in Chad, geishas in Japan, dancers in India, drag queens in New York. The resulting book is part anthropology, part travel writing, part personal memoir, part cultural history, and the blend is handled with more elegance than that list suggests.
From Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse
Hankir’s organizing frame moves through civilizations and centuries, treating eyeliner as a kind of through-line in human self-presentation. The New York Times Book Review called it “cosmetic, tool of rebellion, status signifier”, and all three of those functions appear across different cultures and contexts in the book. In some traditions, kohl around the eyes protects against evil. In others it signals religious devotion. In others still it is pure performance, transformation, the way a drag queen becomes her stage self. Hankir never flattens these distinctions into a single convenient thesis; she lets the variety speak.
What reviewer Patrick Reynolds, who describes knowing nothing about makeup, found surprising was how well the book communicated across that gap. This is a mark of genuine skill: Hankir writes for readers who care about the cultural questions, not just the beauty ones. The Nefertiti-to-Amy-Winehouse framing is more than a clever hook, it genuinely captures the span of what the book covers, from ancient royalty to contemporary celebrity culture, finding continuity where you would not expect it.
The Communities of Color at the Center
One of the book’s most deliberate choices is its emphasis on the history of eyeliner “especially among communities of color.” This is not an accident of reporting, Hankir, who is the editor of Our Women on the Ground, approaches the subject with the understanding that beauty practices have been systematically undervalued when they originate outside Western mainstream culture. The kohl traditions of North Africa and the Middle East, the eye practices in South Asian dance forms, the significance of the look in Japanese geisha culture: these are treated as serious cultural history rather than exotic footnotes.
Reviewer CJK described the book as captivating in its range “from ancient Egypt to modern day America,” and that scope is genuinely achieved. The book does not feel like a collection of disparate cultural vignettes; Hankir weaves them into a coherent argument about what it means to transform your face, and by extension yourself, in public.
Soneela Nankani and the Listening Experience
Soneela Nankani is the ideal narrator for this material. Her voice has the warmth and intelligence that Hankir’s writing requires, this is a book that moves quickly between registers, from the intimate to the scholarly, and Nankani handles each transition without losing the thread. The ten-hour and fifty-five-minute runtime encompasses a substantial amount of reporting and analysis, and Nankani makes it feel like a conversation rather than a lecture. Kassia St. Clair, author of The Secret Lives of Color, a book with a structurally similar premise, praised Hankir’s “dedicated curiosity, humility, and humor,” and Nankani captures all three of those qualities in performance.
Who Should Listen, Who Should Skip
Eyeliner rewards listeners who like cultural history delivered through a specific, unexpected object, along the lines of Mark Kurlansky’s Salt or St. Clair’s own work on color. You do not need to wear makeup to find it compelling; the book is fundamentally about identity, self-presentation, and the surprising weight of small human choices. Those looking for a straightforward beauty history or a trend-focused account of cosmetic culture will find this more intellectual and more international than they might expect. Younger listeners, Eyeliner would work well in a high school or university setting, will find the contemporary sections immediately resonant, while the historical reach gives the whole thing a grounding it would otherwise lack.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of Eyeliner focuses on contemporary beauty culture versus ancient history?
Hankir moves fluidly between the ancient and the contemporary throughout, often within the same chapter. The book does not treat these as separate periods, it uses the historical context to illuminate present-day practices and vice versa. The contemporary sections include reporting from New York drag culture and social media, while the historical sections go back to ancient Egypt and beyond.
Is this primarily a book for people who wear eyeliner, or does it work for readers with no connection to makeup?
Multiple reviewers, including at least one who explicitly does not wear makeup, found the book accessible and absorbing. Hankir’s approach is anthropological and cultural rather than instructional; the book is about what eyeliner means to different communities across time, not about how to apply it.
Does Soneela Nankani’s narration work for the sections set in non-Western cultures, or does the delivery feel disconnected from that material?
Nankani handles the book’s cultural range with consistency and care. Her narration brings the same engaged warmth to the sections on kohl in North Africa, geisha culture in Japan, and classical Indian dance as it does to the American and European material. There is no tonal disconnect between the different cultural sections.
How does Eyeliner compare to The Secret Lives of Color as a ‘history told through an object’ book?
Kassia St. Clair herself praised Eyeliner, which is a meaningful endorsement given the structural similarity between the two books. Eyeliner is more globally focused and more personally reported, Hankir travels to meet the communities she writes about, rather than drawing primarily on archival research. St. Clair’s book is broader in scope but slightly more removed from the human subjects it covers.
