2x In person tickets to Olia Hercules | A Ukrainian Family Story Sat 22 Nov | 4:00pm, Cambridge Union Library.

‘When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, award-winning Ukrainian chef and food writer Olia Hercules knew it was time to tell her family’s story.

Her powerful new book Strong Roots traces a century of Ukrainian history through four generations of one extraordinary family. From her grandmother’s deportation to the snowy wastelands under Stalin, to her aunt’s quiet act of protest at school, to her own parents’ flight from their occupied hometown in 2022, Hercules shares an intimate portrait of resilience and survival through war, peace, invasion and exile.

Alongside these stories are the recipes and tastes that connect past and present: the tang of sour cherries, the rituals of borsch, the comfort of food as a link to home and belonging.

Strong Roots is both a family memoir and an ode to a country’s endurance, brimming with grief and hope, compromise and courage. This promises to be a profoundly moving event, and a reminder of how much the human spirit can endure when it is born of strong roots’.

In conversation with Zuzanna Lachendro.

Venue: Cambridge Union Library

Duration: 1 hour 15 mins