Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books - Posts Tagged "russia"

Alina Bronsky is a young German novelist who emigrated from the Soviet Union at thirteen, and who is now at her second novel. I had read and enjoyed her first novel, Broken Glass Park, which had given her international fame, but I am often skeptical when it comes to young novelists who become famous too fast and too soon. That’s why I was surprised to see that her second novel, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, is not only better than her first, but that its main character, Rosa Achmetowna, is so different from Sascha Naimann, the main protagonist of Broken Glass Park.

Rosa is the archetypal Soviet Matriarch, a grotesque Communist female who reminds me of countless women I’ve known in Communist Eastern Europe, yet, at the same time, she has a unique personality. She is both emblematic and singular: a powerful, vivid character whose voice will stay with you long after you close the book. Anyone who wants to understand what Communism has produced should read this novel. This isn’t, however, some kind of moralizing history lesson! What Bronsky has written is an extremely entertaining novel with a hilarious narrator whose hilarity is a reflection of a deeply disturbed world. The Hottest Dishes… is a novel that you won’t be able to put down.

A 19th century masterpiece about a Russian family of landowners. The psyshological drama and the descriptions of everyday life in the Russian countryside are among the strongest I've ever come across. The characters are built in the tradition of great archetypes, in particular that of the Miser (see Molière and Dickens). It's one of those books that you can't put down, and which are entirely satisfying on an intellectual and emotional level. The ending is pure Dostoevsky: it has an unexpected catharsis, in which the "bad" (not to say "evil") characters attain a brief, saint-like illumination through a symbolic, rather than plausible, repentance. On top of this, the edition I have has gorgeous ink drawings by a certain Kukrynisky (one name). The Russian publisher (yes, the book was published in Russia in a beautiful English translation) is asking the book's readers to write them with their opinions on the novel, the book's design and the translation. I wish I could do this, but I doubt they still exist or have the same address 36 years later. (The book cover I am attaching here is not of the edition I read.)