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Why Italians Love to Talk about Food, by Elena Kostioukovitch (2006, NF)
2010 IACP Cookbook Award Finalist
Chiavari Literary Prize 2007 Italy
Bancarella (cucina) Award 2007 Italy
Hospitality Prize of the Restaurateurs & Hoteliers Federation 2006 RussiaRights sold: Australia - PAN MACMILLAN, Bulgaria - POCKET MEDIA, Estonia - TANAPAEV, China - WEALTH PRESS (traditional chinese), BEIJING QIZHENGUAN MEDIA (simplified chinese), Germany - FISCHER VERLAG, Italy - SPERLING & KUPFER, ODOYA, Korea - RANDOM HOUSE KOREA, Latvia - JANIS ROZE, Macedonia - ANTOLOG, Poland - ALBATROS, Russia - EKSMO, SLOVO, OGI, Serbia - PAIDEIA, Spain - TUSQUETS, UK - DUCKWORTH, Ukraine - FOLIO, USA - FARRAR, STRAUS and GIROUX
Why Italians Love to Talk about Food with a preface by Umberto Eco is a fascinating mix of history, culture, language and cuisine. To illustrate the synergy of these elements, the book presents chapters on each of Italy’s 20 very diverse regions, alternating with chapters on general themes such as olive oil, Slow Food, the Mediterranean diet, the sagra, etc. This is not a recipe book, but a kind of gastronomic-cultural guide: moving from north to south down the peninsula, Kostioukovitch shows how each region’s traditional cuisine and local specialties have been informed by its culture and history, its exposure to foreign influences, its geography and landscape, its topography and climate, its social customs and attitudes, its religious canons, its politics and economy, and more. As the author puts it, food is a common language which crosses the most diverse social and economic strata. In the end it is Kostioukovitch’s love for Italy itself, even more so than its food, that is her muse and inspiration. Lively and entertaining in its approach, the book’s extensive bibliography shows the range of research – culinary, historical, literary, and so on – on which it soundly rests.
"Elena, who certainly turns out to be an exceptional connoisseur of Italian cooking in all its varieties and mysteries, takes us by the hand (and let's say by the palate and by the nose too) on her culinary journey, not only for the sake of showing us the food, but also for showing us Italy, which she herself has spent a lifetime discovering. What you are about to read is a book of cuisine, but also a book about a country, a culture, indeed, many cultures." - UMBERTO ECO, from the preface to “Why Italians Love to Talk about Food”
There are no recipes for quail or anything else in "Why Italians Love to Talk About Food", but anyone with a strong passion for Italian food will find it indispensable. It's like an encyclopedia compiled and penned by a seriously gifted writer, in this case Elena Kostioukovitch. Infused throughout is Kostioukovitch's passion for Italy and its wide-ranging cuisine; you could even call it amore. - Minneapolis Star Tribune
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Elena Kostioukovitch has deciphered a large chunk of the culinary code that is second nature to Italians: knowledge about agriculture, festivals and cooking. - The New York Times
Every decade or so I discover a book that makes me feel I've been waiting for it all my life. Elena Kostioukovitch's Why Italians Love to Talk About Food is one of these books. Her rich book is an omnium gatherum of historically significant food, the extraordinary diversity of Italian cuisine. This fine book is a painting in words of the deepest bonds between local foods, ceremony and people. - Annie Proulx, The Guardian
This is a travelogue journey through Italy's regional cuisines, from the Alps to Sicily. The author noticed the differences of taste, language, and attitude in the ways that Italians talked about food. Local pride comes to mind. This memoir is loaded with illustrations, maps, menus, and explanations. - Gothic Epicures VinCuisine blog
Chefs, foodies, and Italophiles will treasure Elena Kostioukovitch’s Why Italians Love To Talk About Food. This masterful tome is a culinary encyclopedia and travelogue—a chronicle of Italy’s regional cuisines. Cuisine is a "code that pervades all of Italy," Kostioukovitch writes, and discussing it "means celebrating a rite, uttering a magic formula." Gorgeous photos and mouthwatering sample menus round out this literary feast. - Elizabeth Sher, Politics and Prose Bookstore & Coffeeshop website, Washington D.C.
Encyclopedic, this book is. It awakens that longing to head to the kitchen, mince some garlic, pour the olive oil in a pan and start cooking. - An ode to Italy's food, and its place in Italian culture, The Montreal Gazette
This book is something quite different. There are no glossy photos and no recipes. Elena Kostioukovitch has lived in Italy for the past 20 years, and studied its various foods and culinary traditions passionately. The result is a lively discussion of the way what we eat is not just cooked but culturally transformed. This book is not encyclopedic. One shouldn't turn to it for a comprehensive guide of a particular region's food. Its modus operandi is that of the anecdote, like a series of rambling conversations around a dinner table. The Australian
An off-beat take on the Italian cookbook and Italian culture - Michael A. Duvernois, WIKIO
Umberto Eco's translator shares cultural, historical and sociopolitical wisdom in this charming gastronomic survey of the food of her adopted country. - The New York Times
My immediate reaction to Why Italians Love to Talk About Food was, this is a perfect companion to the Lonely Planet guidebook edition covering Italy. Like travelling through Italy, where each corner you turn has the potential to present an unforgettable visual experience, turning each page of this book has the potential to tickle, tease and tantalise your tastebuds. - Web Wombat
"Why Italians Love to Talk About Food", a wandering encyclopedia, travel guide and history, at times ploddingly told, but unlike much else. Elena Kostioukovitch, who was Umberto Eco's Russian translator, walks us from north to south, each stop densely researched. There are no recipes. Photos are gorgeous, if sparse. And the tone is reminiscent of a long, discursive meal. - Chicago Tribune
This is a book for the serious foodie, covering Italy and its flavorful cooking step-by-step, with a sense of the natural resources and cultural backdrop that brought particular ingredients and dishes to the fore. The glossary of terms means you'll never again have to be ignorant of the meaning of such terms as alla cacciatora or in carpione. - The Book Babes, Margo Hammond and Ellen Heltzel’s website
Kostiukovich manages to illuminate the many mysteries of Italian cuisine in a text that inspires one to want to learn more about and cook more Italian food. If you read her book, you may not be able to stop talking about Italian food. - Sacramento Book Review -
Sergei Prokofiev, a biography, by Igor Vishnevetsky (2009, NF)
Rights sold: Russia - Molodaya Gvardia, World English - GLAGOSLAV
“A classical composer is a mad person composing music, which is not clear to his own generation”, the brilliant Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, whose 120th birth anniversary will be marked on April 23rd, used to say. However, the date itself is Prokofiev’s imagination, as the author of his biography that was published in 2009 in the Life of Remarkable People series, Igor Vishnevetsky, who is a poet, a prose-writer and a culturologist, says.
Read more..."Officially, we celebrate Prokofiev’s birthday, which is the product of his imagination, on April 23rd, while according to the official documents, it should be celebrated on April 27th. Igor Vishnevetsky said in an interview with the Voice of Russia."
One of the old myths was that Sergei Prokofiev was a person, who was seriously interested in nothing at all in his life, except music and his literary work. Let’s add chess to that list too. Meanwhile, Prokofiev kept well abreast of politics. And, which you might find surprising enough, though he was a representative of the avant-garde trend in music and a composer who was committed to radical left views regarding the art, as a politician, he was not a left-winger. Shortly after the 1917 revolution in Russia, Prokofiev left it and settled at first in the USA and then in France. Altogether, he spent 18 years abroad. True, parallel with his performances in America, Japan and Europe, he visited Russia with concerts 3 times. Saying that avangardism implies left-wing politics, Igor Vishnevetsky presents the following proofs.
"Prokofiev’s position on the 1917 to 18 events in Russia was clear-cut. He strongly disapproved of what occurred in Russia and regarded the revolutionary events in the country as a catastrophe of cosmic proportions. In an interview with an American newspaper he said that he was strongly positive about the intervention in the Russian Civil War. The knowledge of the above-mentioned destroys the customary image of Prokofiev and at the same time throws light on the circumstances he was guided by when he returned to Russia. Besides, what he said in the interview provides us food to understand why he wrote such music - that very music he wrote after his return to Russia."
The terms for the return of Sergei Prokofiev to Russia were, firstly, his expressing official regret for the interview to the foreign press during the Civil War and of course , his promise not to do anything of the kind in the future. Prokofiev was sure that he would be more in place and more popular at home. And he proved to be right. The great pianist and the brilliant performer of Prokofiev’s works, Svyatoslav Richter, describing Sergei Prokofiev who returned to Russia in 1936 to begin a new life there, says: “Once I saw him walking on the Arbat Street, and there was a challenging force in him.”
The “new life” of Sergei Prokofiev, the laureate of several Stalin prizes, was not cloudless in Russia. There’re still some blank spots in his biography. Of course, his 8 operas, including “War and Peace”, based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel, are well known. His 8 ballets, including “Romeo and Juliet” that was staged many times are well known as well. All his 7 symphonies and all his 9 instrumental concerts, and also his cantatas and numerous chamber pieces are often performed today. “And still, there’s something in Prokofiev’s biography we know nothing about”, Igor Vishnevetsky says.
(с) text: VOR
Table of contents
Part I. FACING THE EAST. 1891-1927
1. Childhood in Ukraine: the Scythian Wakes Up (1891-1905)
2. The 'enfant terrible' in St.Petersburg Conservatory of Music and After It (1905-1917)
3. Beginning of Odissey, or Road Towards the Sun (1918-1921)
4. Years of Wanderings. Art as Magic (1922-1927)
Part II. BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 1927-1945
1. Between the Land of Bolsheviks and Eurasia (1927-1930)
2. Russian Parisian at Home and Abroad (1931-1935)
3. Experimenting within Limits: Prokofiev and Soviet Music (1936-1940)
4. The War (1941-1945)
Part III. IN CAPTIVITY. (1946-1953)
1. After-War Euphoria (1946-1947)
2. Catastrophe: 1948
3. Years of Isolation (1949-1953)
4. Epilogue: After Prokofiev
Appendix I. Chronological table of Sergei Prokofiev's life and art.
Appendix II. Bibliography.