Chitra Ramaswamy
Chitra Ramaswamy is an award-winning journalist with more than ten years’ experience. Expecting, her first book, won the Saltire Society Best First Book Award and was widely praised. As a journalist, Chitra cut her teeth at The Big Issue before moving to The Scotsman, where she became one of the newspaper’s leading columnists, book reviewers, interviewers and feature writers. Now a freelancer, Chitra writes regularly for a number of publications, including The Guardian, and often chairs events at festivals and regularly reviews on radio.
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BUYING OPTIONS
Buy Expecting
When Chitra Ramaswamy discovered she was pregnant, she longed for a book that went above and beyond a manual; a book that did more than describe what was happening in her growing body. One that, instead, got to the very heart of this overwhelming, confusing and exciting experience.
Expecting takes the reader on a physical, emotional, philosophical and artistic odyssey through pregnancy. A memoir exploring each of the nine months of Chitra’s pregnancy, Expecting is a book of intimate, strange, wild and lyrical essays that pay tribute to this most extraordinary and ordinary of experiences.
Prizes and awards
WINNER, Saltire Society First Book of the Year 2016
SHORTLISTED, Polari First Book Prize 2017
REVIEWS OF Expecting
‘An extraordinary book … to write so well, so richly about so ordinary an event. Lovely.’ - Sara Maitland.
‘Like spending time with a particularly wise and funny friend…Writing of great insight, humour and emotional intelligence.’ - Kenny Farquharson, Times
'Beautiful and oddly compelling…All of life is here, oceans are crossed, fates decided, it bristles with love and terror and place, and has a spectacular, blood splattered finale. An extraordinary book and a glorious read.’ - Denise Mina
‘Elegant, funny, brimming with acute observations and suffused with a gentle intimacy. Expecting combines a poet’s feel for language with a journalistic candour.’ - Gavin Francis
'Immediately, poignantly, gripping…magnificent.’ - Zoe Williams, Guardian