Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing by Anya Von Bremzen. Crown Publishers: NY 2013.
Let’s begin with a few basic facts.
1. While we have grocery stores in the US, citizens in the Former Soviet Union have for decades waited in endless lines trying to “procure” food.
2. As Anya Von Bremzen states, “Inevitably, a story about Soviet food is a chronicle of longing, of unrequited desire.” (p.2)
Since we just completed two Passover seders, I must pose the question -- why is Anya Von Bremzen’s memoir different than all previous memoirs?
Other writers may be eloquent or witty, but this author is both. I love the comparison of her Mom’s dream life to black and white movies from Stalinist times “sleek cold war thrillers laced with KGB spooks; melodramas starring duty-crushed lovers.”
Second, because this is a shared memoir of Anya and her 79...



