"Chatty and illuminating." --The New York Times "Riveting--a delicious odyssey full of history, humor, and jaw-dropping stories. If you want to understand the making of modern Russia, read this book." --Daniel Stone, bestselling author of
The Food Explorer A high-spirited, eye-opening, appetite-whetting culinary travel adventure that
tells the story of the last hundred years of Russian power through food, by an award-winning Polish journalist who's been praised by both Timothy Snyder and Bill Buford
In the gonzo spirit of Anthony Bourdain and Hunter S. Thompson, Witold Szablowski has tracked down--and broken bread with--people whose stories of working in Kremlin kitchens impart a surprising flavor to our understanding of one of the world's superpowers.
In revealing what Tsar Nicholas II's and Lenin's favorite meals were, why Stalin's cook taught Gorbachev's cook to sing to his dough, how Stalin had a food tester while he was starving the Ukrainians during the Great Famine, what the recipe was for the first soup flown into outer space, why Brezhnev hated caviar, what was served to the Soviet Union's leaders at the very moment they decided the USSR should cease to exist, and whether Putin's grandfather really did cook for Lenin and Stalin, Szablowski has written a fascinating oral history--complete with recipes and photos--of Russia's evolution from culinary indifference to decadence, famine to feasts, and of the Kremlin's Olympics-style preoccupation with food as an expression of the country's global standing.
Traveling across Stalin's Georgia, the war fronts of Afghanistan, the nuclear wastelands of Chornobyl, and even to a besieged steelworks plant in Mariupol--often with one-of-a-kind access to locales forbidden to foreign eyes, and with a rousing sense of adventure and an inimitable ability to get people to spill the tea--he shows that a century after the revolution, Russia still uses food as an instrument of war and feeds its people on propaganda.
Author: Witold Szablowski
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 11/07/2023
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 7.60h x 5.00w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780143137184
Review Citation(s): Publishers Weekly 08/28/2023
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2023
About the Author
Witold Szablowski is an award-winning Polish journalist and the author of How to Feed a Dictator and Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny. When he was twenty-four he had a stint as a chef in Copenhagen, and at age twenty-five he became the youngest reporter at one of Poland's largest daily newspapers, where he covered international stories in countries including Cuba, South Africa, and Iceland, and won awards for his features on the problem of illegal immigrants flocking to the European Union and the 1943 massacre of Poles in Ukraine. His book about Turkey, The Assassin from Apricot City, won two awards and was nominated for Poland's most prestigious literary prize. Szablowski lives in Warsaw.
