Olia Hercules | A Ukrainian Family Story
Sat 22 Nov 2025 | 4:00pm - 5:00pm
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, award-winning Ukrainian chef and food writer Olia Hercules knew it was time to tell her family’s story.
Her powerful new book Strong Roots traces a century of Ukrainian history through four generations of one extraordinary family. From her grandmother’s deportation to the snowy wastelands under Stalin, to her aunt’s quiet act of protest at school, to her own parents’ flight from their occupied hometown in 2022, Hercules shares an intimate portrait of resilience and survival through war, peace, invasion and exile.
Alongside these stories are the recipes and tastes that connect past and present: the tang of sour cherries, the rituals of borsch, the comfort of food as a link to home and belonging.
Strong Roots is both a family memoir and an ode to a country’s endurance, brimming with grief and hope, compromise and courage. This promises to be a profoundly moving event, and a reminder of how much the human spirit can endure when it is born of strong roots.
In conversation with Zuzanna Lachendro.
Venue: Cambridge Union Library
Duration: 1 hour 15 mins
Tickets available soon.
Author Biography
Olia Hercules was born in the South of Ukraine. She studied Italian language and International Relations at the University of Warwick. After spending a year in Italy, Olia settled in London, pursuing a career in journalism. She would later quit her job as a film business reporter to pursue her dream to cook for a living. Dedicated to researching food culture and culinary traditions of countries less explored, Hercules is the author of the award-winning cookbooks Mamushka, Kaukasis and Summer Kitchens.
Chair Biography
Zuzanna Lachendro is junior commissioning editor at the New Statesman who has written extensively on Polish history and politics, as well as themes of citizenship and national identity.
