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Chopping Onions on My Heart

bySamantha Ellis

On Losing and Preserving Culture

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'An optimistic and wryly funny book... rich with insights' OBSERVER
'I couldn’t put it down’ RUKMINI IYER
‘I loved this book so much... Think: The Body Keeps the Score in practice not theory’ ELLA RISBRIDGER

The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha Ellis grew up surrounded by a language that’s now on the verge of extinction.

The realisation that her son will not understand her mother tongue opens the floodgates and the questions keep coming. How can she pass on the stories without passing on the trauma of displacement? Will her son ever love mango pickle?

In her search for answers Samantha encounters demon bowls, the perils of kohl and the unexpected joys of fusion food in a journey that transports us from the calm of the British Museum to the banks of the River Tigris. As she considers what we lose and keep, she also asks what we might need to let go of to preserve our culture and ourselves.

‘A moving and resonant lament for the past but also a thought-provoking siren call for the future' ANNE SEBBA
'Urgent, alive, propulsive. I adored it' MARINA BENJAMIN

Ellis’s book is a useful reminder that Jewish generational trauma is not confined to the descendants of those who survived the Holocaust. In fact, given the ubiquity of refugees in the modern world, Chopping Onions on My Heart’s aching sense of loss has a truly global resonance

Keith Kahn-Harris, Guardian

About Samantha Ellis

The daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, Samantha Ellis is the author of the books How to be a Heroine and Take Courage and her plays include How to Date a Feminist, Cling to me Like Ivy and Operation Magic Carpet. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, TLS, Spectator, Literary Review and more. She worked on the first two Paddington films. She lives in London.
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Details
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • ISBN: 9781529967098
  • Length: 288 pages
  • Price: £12.99
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