Chopping Onions on My Heart (UK)
Always Carry Salt (US)
It’s the same book! With different titles for UK and US publication.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINGATE PRIZE
BUY in the UK from Owl Bookshop (you can get a signed dedicated copy), or Bookshop.org, Hive, Waterstones, Amazon, Blackwells, Foyles, WH Smiths.
BUY in Ireland, Canada, Australia, Aeteroa New Zealand, and in the US.
LISTEN to me on BBC Start the Week, on Five Books podcast, on Inside a Mountain podcast, on Word of Mouth with Michael Rosen, on The Shift with Sam Baker, on Bread and Butter podcast, on Who Jew Think You Are or on ABC Australia Sunday Extra.
READ me on cooking my way back (with recipes!) for Jewish Food Society; nine best books about Iraqi Jews for the Jewish Book Council, on trying to pass on my food heritage in the Guardian; on the creativity of Passover food in the Financial Times; on why I wrote it & what it meant to me in the Jewish Chronicle; on reading while mothering at Crib Notes; on my top five endangered language books for FiveBooks; on how to be the archivist of your own family for Psyche; in an interview with Elana Benjamin for the Jewish Independent; in an interview with Tina Lernø for LA Public Library; in an interview with Michelle Schingler for Foreword Reviews; and talking about my writing day on Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s substack.
WATCH me talking about the book with Jordan Salama for the Jewish Book Council; at the Chaldean Cultural Centre, on Roots and Narrative Al Nafs podcast, at a Harif event.
Jewish Women’s Archive Winter Book Club Pick
“An optimistic and often wryly funny book…a gift to the future, rich with insights about the nature of belonging that are not limited to one community but matter to all of us” - Stephanie Merritt, Observer
“A linguistic feast (as well as a gastronomic one…)…Chopping Onions on my Heart’s aching sense of loss has a truly global resonance” - Keith Kahn-Harris, Guardian
“Irrepressible…contains multitudes” - Olivia Potts, Spectator
“An urgent and tender exploration of cultural extinction…more than a memoir — it’s an act of cultural rescue, a love letter to a disappearing world, and a meditation on what it means to carry ancestral memory forward into uncertain futures.” - Shamar Hill, Jewish Book Council
“the book captivates. There’s searching and much stretching, as Ellis finds her way through a rich tangle of stories: personal, political, cultural, linguistic” - Erin Douglass, Christian Science Monitor
“An endearing memoir about struggling to come to terms with a particularly complicated heritage” - Howard Freedman, Jewish News of Northern California
“Tender, sensory and layered with history” - Victoria Wood, Biblio Lifestyle
“A memoir that I didn’t know I needed that soothed an ache I didn’t know I felt…Samantha Ellis’s powerful memoir Always Carry Salt exemplifies diaspora yearning and determination. Written with the belief that 'sleeping languages can be kissed back to life,' Always Carry Salt is a remarkable memoir about what we pass down and why."” - Michelle Schingler, Foreword
“A lovely evocation of a language and culture that stand just this side of oblivion” - Kirkus starred review
“Ellis elicits hope and heartbreak in this moving exploration of her Iraqi Jewish roots. She successfully highlights both the richness of her mother tongue and the existential stakes of her quest. The journey is equal parts inspirational and edifying." - Publishers’ Weekly
“"A story of resilience, identity, and the importance of language to a culture."—Library Journal
“It’s impossible to finish this memoir and not come away with a desire to claim as your own fantastic and near-forgotten expressions such as “Yethrem basal all ras efadi!” (you’re chopping onions on my heart!)” - Karen E H Skinazi, Jewish Journal
“This book, which moves easily between the personal and the historical, is unobtrusively learned and tells a heartbreaking story” - Norma Clarke, Literary Review
“Remarkable…tender and profound…As an Iraqi Jew, reading Chopping Onions on my Heart felt like being seen…like a fierce, honest and profoundly comforting hug” - Maia Zelkha, Yad Mizrah
“A radiant and moving meditation on how we might find renewal even in the shadow of devastating events…vibrantly, even radically hopeful” - Elizabeth Morris, Crib Notes
“Finally we are no longer invisible” - Elana Benjamin, Jewish Independent
“I am amazed at the breadth and range of Samantha Ellis’s knowledge and insights, and love the endearing and humorous way that she shares information that is tragic and frightening as well as heart-warming and full of hope” - CLAUDIA RODEN, author of The Book of Jewish Food
“Thoroughly enjoyable…wonderful and unique” - ROSS PERLIN, author of Language City
“A book both greedy and generous, which is how all the best memoirs are” - CAROLINE EDEN, author of Green Mountains
“Extraordinary” - BEE WILSON, author of The Heart-Shaped Tin
“A wonderfully immersive and sensitive meditation on belonging and identity” - VIV GROSKOP, author of How to Own the Room and One Ukrainian Summer
“A book about loss written with pure, irrepressible joy... Urgent, alive, propulsive. I adored it” - MARINA BENJAMIN, author of Last Days in Babylon, and A Little Give
“Beautiful and vibrant, funny and engrossing, this book is full of insights, passion and fascinating twists’ - RACHEL SHABI, author of Off White
I loved this book so much...a heart-opener and an eye-opener... Think: The Body Keeps the Score in practice not theory” - ELLA RISBRIDGER, author of Midnight Chicken
“Easily my non-fiction book of the year...her writing is just incredible - witty, informative and quietly devastating in turn. I couldn’t put it down” - RUKMINI IYER, author of The Roasting Tin
““A beautiful tale of painful cultural loss, delicious food, rich history; and the bittersweet grief that only the perfect recipe can solve. A truly enlightening book that will leave you hungry yet satisfied” - CARIAD LLOYD, author of You are not Alone
“Chopping Onions on My Heart is quite simply wonderful - a lyrical meditation that sparkles with life and joy. Such an elegant study of identity, loss, and hope, and so beautifully written” - FRANCESCA SEGAL, author of Welcome to Glorious Tuga
”A profound meditation on loss and the importance of language as a means of remembering. It is a moving and resonant lament for the past but also a thought-provoking siren call for the future. Thoroughly recommended” - ANNE SEBBA, author of The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz
“Marvellous” - JAMES BARR, author of A Line in the Sand
“A glorious, fascinating, substantial, utterly absorbing journey through love, language, family and time” - BIDISHA
“I devoured this touching, vivid, joyous account of both belonging and not belonging…packed with intelligent nostalgia for a lost paradise of tastes, smells, textures and language Ellis's book is a feast in itself” - AMANDA CRAIG, author of The Three Graces
“Soul-searching, sensory…enthralling” - CAROLINE SANDERSON, The Bookseller
“Beautiful” - EMILY RHODES
“Fascinating, moving and important” - MARIANNE LEVY, author of Don’t Forget to Scream
“A lovely book, full of thoughts about culture, language and place. Sam was a vital element in the writers’ room for Paddington, and this book is predictably brilliant on how people who move home need to bring something with them, and hold onto it tight.” - JOEL MORRIS, author of Be Funny or Die
“Poetic and evocative…I loved this funny, moving memoir” - EMMA FORREST, author of Busy Being Free
‘A treasure’ - SARAH SASSOON, author of Shoham’s Bangle
Samantha’s mother tongue is dying out. An urgent need to find out more becomes an expansive investigation into how to keep hold of her culture -- and when to let it go.
The daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that’s now on the verge of extinction.
The realisation that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s ‘living in the days of the aubergines’ or ‘chopping onions on my heart’ opens the floodgates. The questions keep coming. How can she pass on the stories of displacement without passing on the trauma? Will her son ever love mango pickle?
In her search for answers Samantha encounters demon bowls, the perils of kohl and the unexpected joys of fusion food. Her journey transports us from the clamour of Noah’s Ark to the calm of the British Museum, from the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages to the banks of the River Tigris. As Samantha considers what we lose and keep, she also asks what we might need to let go of to preserve our culture and ourselves.
This is a life-affirming memoir about resilience and repair, and the healing power of dancing to our ancestors’ music, cooking up their recipes and sharing their stories.
For publicity in the UK, please contact Priya Roy at Penguin Random House.
And in the US, please contact Julia Romero at Pegasus Books.
