The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine
Rosalinda Achmetowna is dismayed and furious to learn that her useless, unmarried daughter Sulfia has somehow become pregnant. Yet once the baby is born — a girl named Aminat — Rosalinda swiftly changes her mind. Surely her granddaughter is the most beautiful, the most brilliant, the most authentically Tartar child to ever have been born. Determined to secure a better life for Aminat, Rosalinda begins the hunt for the perfect man to serve as her granddaughter’s stepfather.
By turns horrifying and hilarious, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine introduces readers to a truly unforgettable narrator. Rosalinda is unrepentantly selfish and relentless in pursing her goals, from bribing officials in her unnamed Soviet city to transporting the ashes of loved ones across international borders.
Quote:
“Five days later I came home and found a letter from my husband on the windowsill. In the letter he wrote that he loved another woman and wanted to live with her from now on. He thanked me for our years together and begged me to leave him in peace. There was nothing more. Apparently there are women who break into tears at such news. Their legs buckle and they sink to the tiled floor of the kitchen, with its checkerboard pattern, and other people must step over them in order to get to the refrigerator. I wasn’t one of those women.”
Author:
Alina Bronsky is the author of the novels Broken Glass Park, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, and Just Call Me Superhero. Born in Yekaterinburg, Russia, she now lives in Berlin, Germany.
Published: 2010
Length: 262 pages
Set in: Russia and Germany