Available as Paperback, Hardback, eBook, Downloadable audio
A book about history, friendship, family and what it means to belong, from the award-winning journalist
THE SALTIRE’S NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR
A GUARDIAN’S BEST MEMOIR AND BIOGRAPHY OF 2022
‘Remarkable’ The Times
‘Achingly beautiful’ Guardian
Beautiful in unusual and wonderful ways’ Rebecca Solnit
This book is about two unlikely friends. One born in 1970s Britain to Indian immigrant parents, the other arrived from Nazi Germany in 1939, fleeing persecution.
This is a story of migration, racism, family, belonging, grief and resilience. It is about the state we’re in now and the ways in which we carry our pasts into our futures.
“Homelands is beautiful in unusual and wonderful ways, beyond the grace and magic when its prose rises almost to poetry. It is an extravagant exploration of the imaginative possibilities of empathy, of how a friendship can build a bridge across differences in origins and age, how you can enter into another life, why you should, what happens when you do”
Rebecca Solnit
See more reviews
“Remarkable”
the Times
“A fabulous piece of work”
Cal Flyn
“Achingly beautiful”
guardian
“A spellbinding story of triumph and tragedy, war and sanctuary, emigration and belonging. Fans of Sebald and De Waal are going to love this”
Gavin Francis
Chitra Ramaswamy
Chitra Ramaswamy is an award-winning journalist and author. Her first book, Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy, 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. She is a TV critic for the Guardian, the restaurant critic for The Times Scotland, a columnist for the National Trust for Scotland and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radio Scotland. She lives in Edinburgh with her partner, two young children and rescue dog.
@Chitgrrl
Guardian Homelands review
“Our sense of home explored through the story of a journalist’s friendship with a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor… It is a cliché to describe a book as achingly beautiful, but those are the words I reach for: Homelands is both beautiful and, at times, left me with an ache I struggled to name.”
Aamna Mohdin
Guardian