Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing

Marc Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 333-337).;Born in a surreal Moscow communal apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen, Anya von Bremzen grew up singing odes to Lenin, black-marketeering Juicy Fruit gum at school, and longing for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy and, finally, intolerable. In 1974, when Anya was ten, she and her mother fled to the USA, with no winter coats and no right of return. These days, Anya is the doyenne of high-end food writing. And yet, the flavour of Soviet kolbasa, like Proust's madeleine, transports her back to that vanished Atlantis known as the USSR . In this sweeping, tragicomic memoir, Anya recreates seven decades of the Soviet experience through cooking and food, and reconstructs a moving family history spanning three generations. Her narrative is embedded in a larger historical epic: Lenin's bloody grain requisitioning, World War II starvation, Stalin's table manners, Khrushchev's kitchen debates, Gorbachev's disastrous anti-alcohol policies and the ultimate collapse of the USSR. And all of this is bound together by Anya's sardonic wit, passionate nostalgia and piercing observations. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is a book that stirs the soul and the senses.

Brief Description:
Born in a surreal Moscow communal apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen, Anya von Bremzen grew up singing odes to Lenin, black-marketeering Juicy Fruit gum at school, and longing for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy and, finally, intolerable. In 1974, when Anya was ten, she and her mother fled to the USA, with no winter coats and no right of return. These days, Anya is the doyenne of high-end food writing. And yet, the flavour of Soviet kolbasa, like Proust's madeleine, transports her back to that vanished Atlantis known as the USSR . In this sweeping, tragicomic memoir, Anya recreates seven decades of the Soviet experience through cooking and food, and reconstructs a moving family history spanning three generations. Her narrative is embedded in a larger historical epic: Lenin's bloody grain requisitioning, World War II starvation, Stalin's table manners, Khrushchev's kitchen debates, Gorbachev's disastrous anti-alcohol policies and the ultimate collapse of the USSR. And all of this is bound together by Anya's sardonic wit, passionate nostalgia and piercing observations. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is a book that stirs the soul and the senses.

Table of Contents:
Prologue: Poisoned Madeleines -- Part I. Feasts, Famines, Fables -- 1. 1910s: The Last Days of the Czars -- 2. 1920s: Lenin's Cake -- Part II. Larisa -- 3. 1930s Thank You, Comrade Stalin, for Our Happy Childhood -- 4. 1940s Of Bullets and Bread -- 5. 1950s Tasty and Healthy -- Part III. Anya -- 6. 1960s: Corn, Communism, Caviar -- 7. 1970s: Mayonnaise of My Homeland -- Part IV. Returns -- 8. 1980s: Moscow Through the Shot Glass -- 9. 1990s: Broken Banquets -- 10. Twenty-first Century: Putin on the Ritz -- Part V. Mastering the Art of Soviet Recipes -- Author's Note -- Acknowledgments -- Selected Sources -- A Reader's Guide -- A Conversation with Anya von Bremzen -- A Post-Soviet Zakuski Party.

Review Quotes:
"Delightful . . . The culinary memoir has lately evolved into a genre of its own, what is now known as a 'oodoir.' 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 New York Times Book Review

Review Citations:

• Entertainment Weekly 10/24/2014 pg. 69 (EAN 9780307886828, Paperback)
• Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2013 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)
• Publishers Weekly 08/26/2013 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)
• Library Journal 09/15/2013 pg. 100 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)
• Entertainment Weekly 09/13/2013 pg. 78 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)
• New York Times Book Review 09/15/2013 pg. 26 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)
• Booklist 09/15/2013 pg. 12 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)
• People Weekly 10/07/2013 pg. 55 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)
• New Yorker (The) 10/14/2013 pg. 113 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)
• New York Review of Books 11/21/2013 pg. 10 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)
• Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/04/2013 pg. 33 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)
• Wilson Nonfiction Catalog 04/11/2019 (EAN 9780307886811, Hardcover)