This event is co-sponsored by Edinburgh Jewish Studies Network and the Scottish Network for Religion and Literature.
We are delighted to welcome Chitra Ramaswamy to talk about her latest book: a hybrid biography/memoir exploring her friendship with a 98-year-old German Jewish refugee called Henry Wuga. The two of them might seem unlikely friends: one born in 1970s Britain to Indian immigrant parents, the other fleeing Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport in 1939. And yet, Homelands is a book about common ground; a story of migration, antisemitism, racism, family, belonging, grief and resilience. It won the Saltire Society Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2022 and is available in all good bookshops. Signed copies can be purchased at Toppings.
Chitra Ramaswamy is a journalist and author from London. Her latest book, Homelands: The History of a Friendship, published by Canongate in April 2022, is a work of creative non-fiction exploring her friendship with a 98-year-old German Jewish refugee called Henry Wuga. It won the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year and was included in The Guardian’s top memoirs and biographies of 2022. Her first book, Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy, published by Saraband in April 2016, won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize. She has contributed essays to Antlers of Water, Nasty Women, The Freedom Papers, The Bi:ble, and Message From The Skies and is currently working on a commission from the Alasdair Gray Archive. She writes for The Guardian, is the restaurant critic for The Times Scotland, and broadcasts for BBC radio. She lives in Edinburgh with her partner, two children and rescue dog.
Edinburgh Jewish Literary Society 