Black Sea with Caroline Eden - Book & Ticket Option

This is the ticket & book option for this event. For the ticket only option, please click here.

Order your copy of Black Sea now and receive a free ticket to the event!

Tuesday, 21st of November at 6.30pm

We are happy to announce that Caroline Eden will be at the bookshop to celebrate an updated edition of her fantastic book, Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes - Through Darkness and Light. She will be in conversation with Chitra Ramaswamy.

We will follow up on your purchase with an email with more details on the event, which will be held at Golden Hare Books on St Stephen Street. 

About Black Sea

This is the tale of a journey between three great cities - Odesa, Ukraine's celebrated port city, through Istanbul, the fulcrum balancing Europe and Asia and on to tough, stoic, lyrical Trabzon.

With a nose for a good recipe and an ear for an extraordinary story, Caroline Eden travels from Odesa to Bessarabia, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey's Black Sea region, exploring interconnecting culinary cultures. From the Jewish table of Odesa, to meeting the last fisherwoman of Bulgaria and charting the legacies of the White Russian emigres in Istanbul, Caroline gives readers a unique insight into a part of the world that is both shaded by darkness and illuminated by light.

In this updated edition of the book, Caroline reflects on the events of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent impact of the war on the people of the wider region.

How Odesa, defiant against shelling and blackouts, has gained UNESCO protection while in Istanbul, over lunch with a Bosphorus ship-spotter, she finds out about the role of the Black Sea in the war and how Russians are smuggling stolen grain from Ukraine. Meticulously researched and documenting unprecedented meetings with remarkable individuals, Black Sea is like no other piece of travel writing. Packed with rich photography and sumptuous food, this biography of a region, its people and its recipes truly breaks new ground.

About Caroline Eden

Caroline Eden is an author, journalist and book critic regularly contributing to The Guardian, BBC, Financial Times and The Times Literary Supplement. Black Sea (2018) broke away from the standard format of a travel book, infusing rich stories and recipes from people Caroline met along the way. She is also the author of Samarkand (2016) and Red Sands (2020). Over many years, Caroline has filed stories from Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Russia, Kyrgyzstan Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Haiti and Bangladesh for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent and has spoken to audiences about her adventures at the Financial Times Weekend Festival, British Library, Daunt Books, Royal Geographical Society, Asia House, Stanfords and the Frontline Club.

About Chitra Ramaswamy

Chitra Ramaswamy is a journalist and author. Her latest book, Homelands: The History of a Friendship (Canongate) is a work of creative non-fiction exploring her friendship with a 99-year-old German Jewish refugee called Henry Wuga. It won the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year and was included in The Guardian’s top memoirs and biographies of 2022. Her first book, Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy (Saraband) 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 and recently completed a commission from the Alasdair Gray Archive. She writes for The Guardian, is the restaurant critic for The Times Scotland, and broadcasts for BBC radio.