Strong Roots

A Ukrainian Family Story through War, Exile and Hope

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I am writing this story without knowing its end: it begins long before I was born and will continue long after I die. I am writing this story to help myself heal and to make you understand.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian chef Olia Hercules decided it was finally time to tell her story.

Strong Roots is the story of a century in Ukraine told through four generations of one extraordinary family. It takes us from years of Russification, to Olia's grandmother's deportation to snowy wastelands under Stalin, to her Aunt Zhenia's school protest, to her own parents' flight from Ukraine when their town was occupied in 2022.

This is an ode to the land, to ideas of home and belonging, and to family stories and recipes passed down the generations – the tang of sour cherries, the best way to make borsch. It is an account of resilience in the hardest of circumstances.

Strong Roots brims with hope and grief. It lays bare the compromises and betrayals of generations struggling and surviving through war, peace, invasion and exile. It is an uplifting reminder of how much the human spirit can endure when born from a land rich with strong roots.

  • "Olia Hercules is a beautiful writer. So attuned to the sensual details of the world. Very raw, very honest, in a way I appreciated a lot. And all the ingredients - personal stories, historical context, trauma, hope are so finely balanced. It deserves to be read and admired far and wide!"

    Charlie Gilmour
    author of FEATHERHOOD

  • "Only Olia Hercules could write such a cinematic and brave-hearted book examining what it is to live as a Ukrainian family at a time of unimaginable horrors and yet on every page the reader finds grace, strength, and occasionally the sting of dark Ukrainian humour. Strong Roots manages the near impossible: it is both a deeply personal book and a vital historical record"

    Caroline Eden

  • "I was completely pole-axed by this. It's a breathtaking achievement to depict such pain so exquisitely. And it's strikingly sui generis. Olia Hercules deftly fuses war reporting, food memoir, an investigation into identity and an act of resistance to create what I feel compelled to describe as a painting out of words. An instant classic"

    Nigella Lawson

  • It is the roots that keep the trees from falling during a storm. Olia Hercules tells us that the same is true for people and nations. It is the roots of culture and dignity that make them unbreakable at the time of war and peace, in Ukraine and beyond

    Serhii Plokhy
    author of CHERNOBYL ROULETTE: A WAR STORY
    and THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR

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