Chernobyl Strawberries by Vesna Goldsworthy
Vesna Goldsworthy breezed through life ? a top student at Belgrade University, a presenter of a fashionable radio programme, a poet who performed her work to a crowd of thirty thousand people, a member of the Yugoslav League of Communists, a descendant of one of the fiercest Montenegrin tribes and, perhaps more than anything else, a pampered child of the Serbian middle class. In 1986, at the age of twenty-four, she left Yugoslavia for London to marry an Englishman she had met at the Karl Marx Institute in Bulgaria two years previously. She had no doubt that she would be just as good at being English. At the BBC World Service, where she worked for seven years, she broadcast news bulletins about her own country?s bloody dissolution and learnt ? faced with the ghosts of her childhood amid the rubble -- that she could still tell ?her side? simply by how much it hurt. She wanted to keep her mother tongue alive but ?now knew more words for dying than the Inuit know for snow?. Becoming English was not so simple after all. Vesna started writing the story of her life when she became aware ? faced with the diagnosis of breast cancer when her son was only two ? how strange his mother?s life might one day appear to her child. Surrounded by mementos of her son?s British ancestors who served in the furthest reaches of India and Africa, she wondered if the story of the communist world she came from was even stranger, precisely because it had disappeared so abruptly. Writing a book through which her son could continue hearing his mother?s voice, Vesna learned how to make sense of the fractures and dislocations which marked her life just as surely as the scars which now ran across her body: ?In its fragmented way, my life makes perfect sense. There is nothing extraordinary about it, but, as I try to write it down, I can feel it burning.? In prose that is exquisite in its precision, Vesna tells the story of herself, her family and her lost country. Although purportedly an account of forty years in the life of a passionate woman, Chernobyl Strawberries marks the births and deaths of whole worlds. Vesna Goldsworthy?s captivating memoir about identity, love and belonging marks the emergence of an irresistible new literary talent.
'A funny, painful and brilliant memoir..I, for one, hope that the strawberries of Chernobyl will soon take their place alongside the Lolitas of Tehran and booksellers of Kabul.' Tim Judah, Observer 'Goldsworthy's ability to find unexpected subtle connections in the pattern of her own life elevates this absorbing memoir into something extraordinary.' Guardian 'An exceptional memoir. If there has been a more honest, calm and profoundly moving one in the last few years, then I've missed it.' TLS 'Vesna Goldsworthy writes with wit and nostalgia about the vanished country in which she grew up... A charming book, beautifully written.' Spectator 'Chernobyl Strawberries makes you feel like you've just come back from a wonderful, slightly drunken tete-a-tete with a new friend... Beautifully written, complicated and life-affirming.' Scotland on Sunday
VESNA GOLDSWORTHY left Yugoslavia in 1986 to marry an Englishman she had met at the Karl Marx Institute in Bulgaria two years earlier. Since arriving in England she has worked in publishing and for the BBC World Service. Her first book, Inventing Ruritania, a study of the 'Wild East' of Europe in literature and film was published to broad critical acclaim. She is currently Senior Lecturer in English at Kingston University and is Director of Kingston's Centre for Suburban Studies, which she founded in 2004. She lives in West Londonwith her husband and young son. Chernobyl Strawberries was published by Atlantic in 2005.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781843544159 |
| ISBN 10 | 1843544156 |
| Title | Chernobyl Strawberries |
| Author | Vesna Goldsworthy |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Atlantic Books |
| Year published | 2006-03-09 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |