Description
'Exceptional ... honest, calm and profoundly moving' Andrew Taylor, TLS 'Three qualities make Vesna Goldsworthy's memoir stand apart... her honesty, her skill as a writer and the fascinating circumstances of her life' Josh Lacey, Guardian 'Engrossing ... the work of a fiercely honest and cultivated intelligence' Paul Bailey, Sunday Times 'Beautifully written, complicated and life-affirming' Scarlett Thomas, Scotland on Sunday 'Deftly, beautifully done' Jasper Rees, Daily Telegraph 'Fantastically well written' Tim Judah, Observer 'I keep trying to work out how you've changed ... Back where we come from one doesn't smile so often, and one doesn't say everything is wonderful if it isn't.' 'Wonderful,' I retorted, and smiled. How Would You make sense of your life it you thought it might end tomorrow? In this captivating memoir, Vesna Goldsworthy tells the story of herself, her Serbian and her English families, and her lost Yugoslav homeland. A promising young poet who once presented her work to a crowd of thirty thousand, in 1986 she left Yugoslavia for England, confident that she would be just as good at being English. Then came years of war and exile: she broadcast the news of her homeland's disintegration while her family experienced bombardment and exile, then received a diagnosis of cancer after her son was born. Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee has described Goldsworthy's writing as moving 'on the shadowy borders where the wounds of separation turn into the scars of loss'. Like the scars that inspired its making, Chernobyl Strawberries is both elegiac and triumphant. In equal measure witty and melancholy, this bitter-sweet story of the life of one East European woman traffics in the births and deaths of whole worlds. Book jacket.
