Anya Von Bremzen Books

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 as well as the senses.

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 as well as the senses.

"National Dish peels back the layers of myth, commercialization, and fetishization around the great world cuisines. In so doing, it brings us to a deep appreciation of how the country makes the food, and the food the country"-- Provided by publisher

A transportive, authoritative book on the evolution of Cuban cuisine

Wenn sich Anya von Bremzen an ihre Kindheit erinnert, dann denkt sie an aromatische Hefeteig-Piroggen, an Lamm-Pilaf und Borschtsch, sie denkt an die köstliche proletarische Wurst, die man den Gästen servierte, und vor allem an ihre große russische Familie: an Urgroßmutter Anna, die als überzeugte Feministin für die 'neue Sowjetfrau' kämpfte und dafür ein schreckliches Schicksal erlitt, an den 'Gefilte Fisch' ihrer jüdischen Großeltern in Odessa und an ihren Großvater Naum, der als Geheimdienst-Offizier zur Nomenklatura zählte, bis sich seine Tochter Larisa ausgerechnet in den Dissidenten Sergei verliebte … Aus der Kraft der Erinnerung heraus gelingt Anya von Bremzen ein hinreißendes Buch über das manchmal absurde, manchmal unfassbar tragische Leben in einer Diktatur und darüber, wie sehr eine fettige Wurst glücklich machen kann.