alina bronsky the hottest dishes of the tartar cuisine

Dieter isn’t what Rosalinda expected, saying that he “no longer fit image of a German (186) when she came to the country and actually experienced and interacted with German people. Rosalinda assumed that Dieter would be as she perceived all Germans: sophisticated, rich, and refined. Rosalinda forcefully persuades her daughter to get the man to marry her, so that Sulfia, Rosalinda, and Aminat can all go live in Germany, which Rosalinda considered to be a much more orderly and clean place to live where “nothing bad happens to people” (195).

Later on in the novel, after Sulfia and her Jewish husband divorce, Sulfia meets a German man, Dieter, who is staying in the hospital she works in. Rosalina was discriminatory against the Jew and his family that her daughter married into, saying that “Lena was perpetually sick…Must have been the Rosenbaum genes” (127).

Rosalinda wanted nothing to do with her Jewish granddaughter, Lena, because she favored her Tartar granddaughter, Aminat, more. Rosalinda didn’t care much for the Jewish husband and his parents, the Rosenbaums, especially after the son impregnates her daughter and plans to leave with Rosalinda’s family to live in Israel. Rosalinda’s impressions of the two men are very different, since they are mainly based upon stereotypes she has of Jews and of Germans. Other important topics in the novel are identity and stereotypes, which are exhibited when Rosalinda’s daughter Sulfia marries a Jewish man and later marries a German man. Members of the family share the collective memory of their ancestors through their cuisine. The idea of collective memory comes through when the recipes of the Tartar cuisine are passed down from generation to generation in the family as a way to remember their ethnic roots. Rosalinda, who grew up as an orphan, didn’t feel particularly connected to her past history, so the family’s cultural ties came from Kalganow, the husband, and through Rosalina’s cooking of Tartar foods. This novel is relevant to concepts discussed in class, especially those pertaining to collective memory and the definition of identity.Īn important theme throughout the book is the cultural history of the Tartars. Issues of family, marriage, identity, culture, and stereotypes are played out in the Kalganova family’s history. The story of the Kalganova family is narrated by Rosalinda, the matriarch of the family. English translation: The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, translated by Tim Mohr, New York: Europa Editions, 2011.īook review by UC Berkeley undergraduate student Melissa Carlson:Īlina Bronsky’s novel, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, which was written in 2010, examines identity and culture in a Tartar family living in Russia and the events that surround their eventual migration to Germany.

Alina bronsky the hottest dishes of the tartar cuisine