Vesna Goldsworthy, née Bjelogrlic, was born in Belgrade and grew up there under Tito. At the age of twenty-four, she left Yugoslavia for London to marry an Englishman she had met at the Karl Marx Institute in Bulgaria. Her first book, Inventing Ruritania, was published in 1998 and was translated into Bulgarian, Greek, Romanian and Serbian. She wrote her acclaimed memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries, (Atlantic 2005) upon facing a diagnosis of breast cancer: she felt moved to describe her life in Yugoslavia for her young son, and record a cultural heritage of the land behind the news bulletins. Chernobyl Strawberries became a bestseller in five European countries. It was serialised in The Times and read by Goldsworthy herself as ‘Book of the Week’ on Radio Four. She is Senior Lecturer in English at Kingston University, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London, and Director of Kingston’s Centre for Suburban Studies.

More information: Interview with the Telegraph