Strong Roots

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Strong Roots, written and read by Olia Hercules, featuring original music performed by Cats & Bats and Olia Hercules.

'An instant classic' NIGELLA LAWSON
'Sweeping, intimate, defiant and brimming with love' LOUISE KENNEDY
'It is the roots that keep the trees from falling during a storm. Olia Hercules tells us that the same is true for people and nations' SERHII PLOKHY

I am writing this story without knowing its end: it begins long before I was born and will continue long after I die. I am writing this story to help myself heal and to make you understand.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian chef Olia Hercules decided it was finally time to tell her story.

Strong Roots is the story of a century in Ukraine told through four generations of one extraordinary family. It takes us from years of Russification, to Olia’s grandmother’s deportation to snowy wastelands under Stalin, to her Aunt Zhenia's school protest, to her own parents’ flight from Ukraine when their town was occupied in 2022.

This is an ode to the land, to ideas of home and belonging, and to family stories and recipes passed down the generations – the tang of sour cherries, the best way to make borsch. It is an account of resilience in the hardest of circumstances.

Strong Roots brims with hope and grief. It lays bare the compromises and betrayals of generations struggling and surviving through war, peace, invasion and exile. It is an uplifting reminder of how much the human spirit can endure when born from a land rich with strong roots.

Critics Review

I was completely pole-axed by this. It’s a breathtaking achievement to depict such pain so exquisitely. And it’s strikingly sui generis. Olia Hercules deftly fuses war reporting, food memoir, an investigation into identity and an act of resistance to create what I feel compelled to describe as a painting out of words. An instant classic
Nigella Lawson
It is the roots that keep the trees from falling during a storm. Olia Hercules tells us that the same is true for people and nations. It is the roots of culture and dignity that make them unbreakable at the time of war and peace, in Ukraine and beyond
Serhii Plokhy, author of CHERNOBYL ROULETTE: A WAR STORY and THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR
Olia Hercules is a beautiful writer. So attuned to the sensual details of the world. Very raw, very honest, in a way I appreciated a lot. And all the ingredients – personal stories, historical context, trauma and hope are so finely balanced. It deserves to be read and admired far and wide
Charlie Gilmour, author of FEATHERHOOD
Only Olia Hercules could write such a cinematic and brave-hearted book examining what it is to live as a Ukrainian family at a time of unimaginable horrors and yet on every page the reader finds grace, strength, and occasionally the sting of dark Ukrainian humour. Strong Roots manages the near impossible: it is both a deeply personal book and a vital historical record
Caroline Eden
Bittersweet, life-affirming and devastating all at the same time. I read the entire book with a lump in my throat. Olia has written an exquisite and unforgettable book
Mel Giedroyc
Fiery, tender, deeply personal, how else to explain the importance of this unflinching account by an acclaimed food-writer - cook, mother, daughter, grandchild - of a people and place in a land under siege? Intimate, moving and brilliantly written, every page is a treasure-trove of memories - her own, her family's, and through listening to the experience of others. Here, in all its beauty and sorrow, is the story of Ukraine as it is, and was, and surely will be again. Unforgettable
Elisabeth Luard
A searing, magnificent work. Poetic, personal, and raw. An exploration of what it means to be Ukrainian and to be defiant
Andrew Harding, BBC correspondent and author of A SMALL, STUBBORN TOWN
Sweeping, intimate, defiant and brimming with love. An exceptional work by a writer of enviable gifts
Louise Kennedy, author of TRESPASSES
Hercules is a remarkable writer and this is a stunningly beautiful book that moved me to the core
Merlin Sheldrake, author of ENTANGLED LIFE
Hercules's thought-provoking book is full of sparkling images and powerful insights into the relationship between food and society ... Both a history of Ukrainian gastronomic culture - drawing on the array of social and political phenomena that form culinary traditions - and a family saga played out against the background of Ukraine's Soviet and post-Soviet life
Observer
An important book you can't put down, spanning several generations that brings to life what war and oppression does to proud people. But it is also a beautifully written and inspiring story about the enduring power of the human spirit ... I cannot recommend it enough
The Sun
There is great beauty, fierce joy and an indomitable appetite for life in her rendering of her family's story
Country Life
Part memoir and part cultural love letter ... A beautifully written and uplifting read about courage and resilience
The Sun
Written with a sizzling pen and a chef's sensitivity to smell and flavour
Literary Review
[Strong Roots] looks back over four generations of family for whom war and displacement have been familiar experiences. From her researches into Ukrainian food, Hercules has hours of recorded interviews with relatives. From their voices a family saga emerges. The trauma she describes, both present and past, makes for moving, often painful reading. But the writing itself is a joy
The Spectator

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