Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episode: Elia Meghnagi, "Escape from Benghazi: Diary of an Imposter" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2022)
Description: Elia Meghnagi last saw his childhood home in Benghazi when he was only seventeen. A member of the endangered and fast-shrinking millennia-old Jewish community of Libya, in 1958 Elia was forced to flee, finding refuge in Cambridge as a foreign student. Elia built a new life for himself in England, finding friends, community, love, and a career in telecomms engineering that would take him across the globe until he swapped his high-flying career for one, no less challenging, in the kosher food business. Full of nostalgia for his native land and pride in his Sephardi roots, he carries us to...