- Published: 12 September 2013
- ISBN: 9781446463529
- Imprint: Transworld Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 448
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking
- Published: 12 September 2013
- ISBN: 9781446463529
- Imprint: Transworld Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 448
A delicious, intelligent book. When I read it, I can taste the food but also the melancholy, tragedy, and absurdity that went into every bit of pastry and borscht
Gary Shteyngart
a monumental but deeply human book that reads like a great Russian novel, filled with dark humor and nostalgia. It opens up an entire universe, teaching us about the many deep meanings of food: cultural, political, social, historical, personal. It is also an utterly magical journey into a rich, mysterious land of totalitarian tyranny, and a portrait of a courageous, passionate people.
Ferran Adria
You will read few better books about food, family, exile or the Soviet tragedy—and none, I'll bet, which combines all those themes this magically. Funny, angry, ingenious and moving.
AD Miller, author of 'Snowdrops'
Heartbreakingly poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. This is an important book, a must read!
Heston Blumenthal
The culinary memoir has lately evolved into a genre of its own... But Anya von Bremzen is a better writer than most of the genre's practitioners, as this delectable book, which tells the story of postrevolutionary Russia through the prism of one family's meals, amply demonstrates… von Bremzen moves artfully between historical longshots...and intimate details. The descriptions of meals are delightful...
New York Times
wry, provocative, genre-busting...
Wall Street Journal
One-of-a-kind … Breathtaking feats of raconteurial skill... Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is not only a magic tablecloth, it’s a magic carpet that revisits the roads and lanes of the former Soyuz, surveying the tales of hardship and hardwon joys of von Bremzen’s relatives and the Russian people…
Liesl Schillinger, The Daily Beast
a rich, zesty history of family life in the USSR.
Entertainment Weekly
This poignant memoir is an education in the richness of eastern European cuisine, and the story of Soviet communism, through the lens of family experience.
Observer
Through a kaleidoscopic mix of family life, politics, history, and jokes, von Bremzen evokes in her book a whole Soviet-era world of deprivation and delight.
Tablet
a lively, precisely detailed cultural chronicle.
Kirkus Review
Celebrated food writer von Bremzen pulls back the curtain on Soviet life in this sweeping, multigenerational memoir.
Publishers Weekly
Most Westerners imagine Stalinist Russia as a food desert...Although this view has plenty of truth, it lacks nuance and humanity, as von Bremzen reveals so eloquently in this memoir...[Von Bremzen] shows the personal side of Soviet life, recounting the terror of war and secret police as well as the power of human resilience.
Booklist
By turns funny, tragic and nostalgic, this is a wonderful, fascinating volume, which puts a human face on the grim pages of the history books
The Lady
Vastly entertaining... A real treat.
Woman & Home
von Bremzen has conjured up the Proustian aromas of her Soviet life for her enjoyable ‘foodoir’... perceptive and funny on the subtleties of life under Soviet rule and in exile.
Charlotte Hobson, Spectator
Moving and darkly comic
Niki Segnit, The Sunday Times
Absorbing... a social history of the Soviet Union cast through the prism of food
Jewish Chronicle
Turns a bittersweet eye and an intelligent heart on Soviet history through food... Beautifully told
LA Times
Von Bremzen knows how to tell a story - poignant, funny but never lacking
Chicago Tribune
An ambitious food memoir that is also a meticulously researched history of the Soviet Union... a meditation on culinary nostalgia
Julia Moskin, New York Times
Rollicking and heartrending
Time
A painstakingly researched and beautifully written cultural history but also the best kind of memoir... A breathtaking balancing act... Von Bremzen is as much a virtuoso in her writing as her mother is in her cooking
New York Review of Books
My heart gladdened at the sight of Anya Von Bremzen's book. This is history at a personal level, the kitchen table
Martin Cruz Smith, Wall Street Journal
[Von Bremzen] is a profoundly gifted writer, able to lace information with observation, observation with wit...[this book] feels rather like a novel, richly populated and filled with deft dialogue, yet it's also crammed full of history
LA Weekly
I don't think there's ever been a book quite like this; I couldn't put it down. Warm, smart and completely engaging... this is a book you won't forget
Ruth Reichl, author of Tender at the Bone
Much more a work of family memory than a practical cookbook or a historical survey... in which colours, textures and aromas open into often gut-wrenching recollections
Times Literary Supplement
One of the most unexpectedly pleasurable reads this year... funny, intimate, evocative and rueful
Kirkus reviews
a monumental but deeply human book that reads like a great Russian novel, filled with dark humor and nostalgia. It opens up an entire universe, teaching us about the many deep meanings of food: cultural, political, social, historical, personal. It is also an utterly magical journey into a rich, mysterious land of totalitarian tyranny, and a portrait of a courageous, passionate people.
Ferran Adria
You will read few better books about food, family, exile or the Soviet tragedy—and none, I'll bet, which combines all those themes this magically. Funny, angry, ingenious and moving
AD Miller, author of Snowdrops
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is a monumental but deeply human book that reads like a great Russian novel, filled with dark humor and nostalgia. It opens up an entire universe, teaching us about the many deep meanings of food: cultural, political, social, historical, personal. It is also an utterly magical journey into a rich, mysterious land of totalitarian tyranny, and a portrait of a courageous, passionate people. I'm full of admiration for Anya's tremendous achievement!
Ferran Adria