I don’t say that lightly, and I don’t simply mean that it is a great book. This is a story that needs to be told. It’s the story of the incredible bias in sex ratio in Asia and Eastern Europe. It’s the story of the selective abortion of female foetuses that has led to the disappearance of 160 million women and girls, a number greater than the entire female population of the US. It’s the story of the origins of sex-selective abortion, a practice that has its roots, not in the typical culprits of cultural bias and old traditions, but in rising wealth, Western influence and new technology.

Hvistendahl goes round the world, talking to the people affected by this issue,