When journalist Chitra Ramaswamy first interviewed Henry Wuga about his story as a Holocaust survivor, she didn’t know yet it would be the beginning of a long friendship. The unlikely friendship between a young woman born in 1970s Britain to Indian immigrant parents, and an old man who had fled Nazi Germany as a child in 1939. This friendship inspired her to write an incredibly beautiful book, Homelands, a story of migration, racism, family, belonging, grief and resilience.
Chaired by Isla Rosser-Owen
Ticket Information
This event costs £5 with a concession price of £3.50.
To book tickets please use the orange button at the top of this page. This will take you to our ticket provider, TicketSource.
About the speaker
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 99-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 recently completed 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.
Browse all the books featured in the Islay Book Festival 2023 at The Celtic House