A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations
With startling beauty and sardonic wit, Anya von Bremzen tells an intimate yet epic story of life in that vanished empire known as the USSR—a place where every edible morsel was packed with emotional and political meaning.
Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sangodesto Lenin, black-marketeeredJuicy Fruit gumat school, watched her father brew moonshine, and,like most Soviet citizens, longed fora taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return.
Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, in its full flavor, both bitter and sweet, Anya and Larisa, embark on a journey unlike any other: they decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience—turning Larisa’s kitchen into a "time machine and an incubator of memories.” Together, mother and daughter re-create meals both modest and sumptuous, featuring a decadent fish pie from the pages of Chekhov, chanakhi (Stalin’s favorite Georgian stew), blini, and more.
Through these meals, Anya tells the gripping story of three Soviet generations—
masterfully capturing the strange mix of idealism, cynicism, longing, and terror that defined Soviet life. We meet her grandfather Naum, a glamorous intelligence chief under Stalin, and her grandmother Liza, who made a perilous odyssey to icy, blockaded Leningrad to find Naum during World War II.We meet Anya’s hard-drinking, sarcastic father, Sergei, who cruelly abandons his family shortly after Anya is born; and we are captivated by Larisa, the romantic dreamer who grew up dreading the black public loudspeakers trumpeting the glories of the Five-Year Plan. Their stories unfold against the vast panorama of Soviet history: Lenin’s bloody grain requisitioning, World War II hunger and survival, Stalin’s table manners, Khrushchev’s kitchen debates, Gorbachev’s disastrous anti-alcohol policies. And, ultimately, the collapse of the USSR.And all of it is bound together by Anya’s passionate nostalgia, sly humor, and piercing observations.
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses.
0 有用 Vaiśravana 2015-11-25 14:35:01
兩週前就讀完了,原本作為這學期一門課的textbook讀的, 但比想像中的精彩。書中很多對蘇聯不同時代生活的刻畫相當真實而有趣,比如戰時排隊領麵包的列寧格勒市民,60年代高幹幼兒園的特供飲食,中亞巴扎裡賣kimchi 的高麗人等等。當然也不能少了「列梅毒」「布里茲涅夫同志的勳章」這種老梗。從一個親歷者的角度看蘇聯歷史,非常有意思
0 有用 Ishmael 2021-02-13 14:12:37
以食物为线索,通过自己一家四代人的故事写苏联史,可口又生动,让人唾液与眼泪齐飞。此前对苏联全无了解的我,读的时候最大的感触是:太像了……原来真的是全盘照搬啊。
0 有用 Ivyyyy 2021-07-02 15:43:52
在往返苏州的高铁上看,写的很有趣,一边看一边查不认识的菜名。馋,也动情。
1 有用 iAudioBook 2018-03-10 02:33:13
俄罗斯食谱,BTW, Any request for any ebook finding, please visit my home page.
0 有用 许三 2015-02-10 10:51:42
Life, in the Soviet Union
0 有用 amaranta 2022-01-17 08:38:52
“Kremlin shifted, commissars vanished, but the official Soviet myth of plenty persisted, and people clung to the magic tablecloth fairy tale.”
0 有用 Ivyyyy 2021-07-02 15:43:52
在往返苏州的高铁上看,写的很有趣,一边看一边查不认识的菜名。馋,也动情。
0 有用 zk 2021-03-29 22:18:58
没什么cooking,基本都是历史和政治,而且都很个人和主观
0 有用 Ishmael 2021-02-13 14:12:37
以食物为线索,通过自己一家四代人的故事写苏联史,可口又生动,让人唾液与眼泪齐飞。此前对苏联全无了解的我,读的时候最大的感触是:太像了……原来真的是全盘照搬啊。
0 有用 Jacintta H 2020-11-16 08:19:49
通过食物写苏联历史,写得很好看。才知道苏联在30年代大规模流放(relocate/deport)韩裔居民,17万+人被流放到人烟稀少的哈萨克斯坦南部;还有就是苏联历史和我们自己的历史真有很多相似之处啊