She brooks no argument, not even from those she is seeking to protect and improve. Typical.Īnd there you have it in a nutshell. The fictional reader of this piece is the grandmother who allegedly sold her granddaughter in exchange for her daughter’s wedding ring and she thinks she’s not been mentioned! Rosa Achmetowna is a self-delusional egomaniac, whose pursuit of what she thinks best for her family (coincidentally always the best thing for her) is relentless. I read and read, but there was nothing about me. How finally she had been sold to a German paedophile by her grandmother in exchange for him marrying her mother and how she landed in Germany as a result. How she had starved and had been beaten for being such a disobedient child. “Uplifting, surprising, spot on.I read how Aminat had grown up in a Soviet ghetto without a father, just her mother’s ever-changing men. A book that, after you finish it, you immediately want to start to read again.”- Stuttgarter Zeitung “Irony, subtle humor, fascinating characters. Max, over the course of the story, will appreciate that people’s questionable behaviour may often be motivated by sadness. Here the best-selling and internationally renowned author, while never abandoning her trademark and razor-sharp wit, tells a family story through a young boy’s eyes. While Max’s grandmother recalls the outrageously nasty Rosa from Bronsky’s best-selling book, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, this is a more tender and moving family portrait. Everybody will have to learn to defend themselves from Max’s all-powerful grandmother.Īlina Bronsky writes of family dysfunction and machinations with a droll and biting humor, a tremendous ear for dialog, and a generous heart that is forgiving of human weakness. When a child is born to Nina that is the spitting image of Max’s grandfather, things come to a hilarious if dramatic head. While he may be a dolt in his grandmother's eyes, Max is bright enough to notice that his stoic and taciturn grandfather has fallen hopelessly in love with their neighbor, Nina. His grandmother has been telling Max that he is an incompetent, clueless weakling since he was a child and she’d spend the day sitting in the back of his classroom to be sure he came to no harm. But she is not at all pleased with how things are run in Germany: the doctors and teachers are incompetent, the food is toxic, and the Germans are generally untrustworthy. When his grandmother-a terrifying, stubborn matriarch and a former Russian primadonna-moved them from the Motherland it was in search of a better life. Max lives with his grandparents in a residential home for refugees in Germany. A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2021 From the acclaimed author of The Hottest Dishes Of The Tartar Cuisine “a cruel comic romp ends as a surprisingly winning story of hardship and resilience” ( The New Yorker).
0 kommentar(er)
