Anya Von BremzenSpeaker and Booking Agent Information

Born in a surreal Moscow communal rental in which eighteen households shared one kitchen, Anya von Bremzen grew up making a song odes to Lenin, black-marketeering Juicy Fruit gum at school, and craving for a flavor of the legendary West. It became a lifestyle via way of means of turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy, and, finally, intolerable.

In 1974, whilst Anya became ten, she and her mom fled to the USA, without wintry weather coats and no proper of return. These days, Anya is the doyenne of high-cease meal writing. And yet, the taste of Soviet kielbasa, like Proust's madeleine, transports her lower back to that vanished Atlantis is referred to as the USSR.

In this sweeping, tragicomic memoir, Anya recreates seven many years of the Soviet enjoy thru cooking and meals and reconstructs a shifting own circle of relatives records spanning 3 generations.

Her narrative is embedded in a bigger ancient epic: Lenin's bloody grain requisitioning, World War II starvation, Stalin's desk manners, Khrushchev's kitchen debates, Gorbachev's disastrous anti-alcohol policies, and the last disintegrate of the USSR. And all of that is certain collectively via way of means of Anya's sardonic wit, passionate nostalgia, and piercing observations.

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is a book that stirs the soul in addition to the senses.