From Samoyeds to food

Sha, the Messiah is coming

Vladimir Sharov. Be like children // "Znamya", 2008, #1, 2 ; "Vagrius", 2008.

Connoisseurs have been waiting for a new novel by Vladimir Sharov for several years. Sharov is a religious writer, which is rare not only in our time. In addition, being a historian and a candidate of sciences, Vladimir Sharov realizes his scientific potential in an excitingly non-rigorous artistic form. This connection gives a new Russian historiosophy in Sharov’s novels.

Moscow Circle of Believers; endangered Samoyeds; a preacher who suggested that they are the chosen people, and at the same time the descendants of the Magi; a madhouse where the historian of Lenin’s life is hiding in Gorki, having seen that the leader was in the hands of God, leading the damned proletariat on a new crusade. And so on.

No matter what is told in the plot, which is brimming with branches, it is about one thing - an attempt to save people with the help of painful truth. It’s interesting to read, but it seems that I’ve already read this in other novels by Vladimir Sharov. Then it was a revelation that caused scandals and imitations. But prose lives in its time, and now only the addition of words remains. By repeating motifs developed in other books, the author inevitably does it less carefully. Maybe he secretly hopes that the second coming that his heroes are preparing will happen before he finishes the text?

A recent favorable review of the novel by critic Toporov, so unusual for that, promises, I hope, a place for Vladimir Sharov in the “National Bestseller”. And there it really is, the second coming is just a stone’s throw away.

Don't die with your loved ones

Olga Kuchkina. Deadly love. - M.: Vremya, 2008. - 448 p.

The book by the famous writer, playwright, and journalist is subtitled “Personal Stories of Famous People.” There is a scattering of celebrities here from Stalin with Alliluyeva and his other women and Lenin with Inessa Armand to Venedikt Erofeev with Natalya Shmelkova and Vladimir Maksimov with Irena Lesnevskaya. And the form of the story is very different - from sketches and essays, as in the case of Herzen, Chekhov and Bunin (with Vera Muromtseva in the title and with Varya Pashchenko in the text), to personal interviews with Irina Shostakovich, Vera Tariverdieva, Irina Mashkovskaya, the last wife of the poet Yuri Levitansky, forty-four years younger than him. It is this interruption of intonation, from outwardly biographical to intimately conversational, that gives the entire book a strangely personal authenticity. It really seems that the author witnessed the drama of Olga Khokhlova, Picasso’s wife, investigated Marilyn Monroe’s connection with the Kennedy brothers, communicated with the Galichs, and not just with Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev just after the death of Raisa Maksimovna, and that she is no stranger to Yoko Ono and John. And the point is not only in literary and journalistic skill, but in Olga Kuchkina’s participation in that “great time” of culture, where, as in Dante’s purgatory, all the great ones converge to continue the communication guaranteed by the human constitution.

Alexandria Symphony

Faina Grimberg. Cleopatra. - M.: AST, 2007. - 528 p.

There is no Faina Grimberg. There is a writer's machine gone off the rails, the range of writing of which is limitless. Here's a book about Cleopatra, and the next volume is about the terrorist Kalyaev. Here came "free historical conversations" about two dynasties - the Rurikovichs and the Romanovs, and here is the poetic "Andreev's Love Reader". Here is “The Fate of a Turkish Woman” in the Armenian-Turkish year of 1915, but there are no longer on store shelves books about the “Westernizer” Andrei Yaroslavich, brother of Alexander Nevsky, and “Handwritten Notes of Anna von Munchausen”, and “Hey, Osman!”, and where - then in libraries there was a monograph “Bulgarians and the World”, and before the name “Faina Grimberg” came out, entire collections of works by the same machine were published by authors - Jacob Lang, Jeanne Bernard, other “famous Western writers”, snapped up by readers. etc.

The books of Faina Grimberg are fraught with mysteries by definition. So in this one, besides Cleopatra, the hero is the city itself - Alexandria. Poems by Kuzmin and Cavafy, ancient descriptions of the capital of Hellenism, which united the learning of all cultures, fill the book with a special spirit. Cleopatra is brought within arm's reach. What is her visit to a poetry evening worth? It’s like in the Moscow “Bilingual”, where Jewish poets and educated Alexandrians read.

Cleopatra is the heroine of the two-thousand-year-old myth of the femme fatale. A myth created by dozens of authors from Plutarch to Ingeborg Bachmann mentioned in the book. A myth from which the heroine falls out due to her liveliness of character and acquaintance with so many scribes and poets that it’s a piece of cake for her to see right through us. Not exactly the queen of Egypt, but the mistress of the ecumenical literary salon. Very lively.

Prophet's food

Lilia Zahuali. Islamic cuisine / Transl. from Italian - M.: NLO, 2008. - 224 p.

The book appeared in the “Everyday Culture” series. And its presentation took place in appropriate interiors and with oriental treats.

Islamic cuisine has united world gastronomic traditions - from Persian, Indian, African to ancient Greek, Roman, and even Chinese. The delicacy of food is combined with the sweetness of speeches, parables, readings of sacred and other texts. Some people love with their stomach, and the reader loves with words that delight the tongue no worse than fine wines and dishes.

The book by Lilia Zaouali, a young anthropologist and ethnographer originally from Tunisia, who graduated from the Sorbonne and now lives in Italy, consists of about a third of the scientific part comparing national cuisines of the world, nightmares and phobias associated with food, meals of the prophet and analysis of ancient cooking. And most of the book is recipes: from cold appetizers and sauces to cheeses and couscous. In general, another cookbook, but with the now fashionable scholarly sauce and seasonings from parables, a glossary and everything that comes to hand from skillfully brewed anthropology and ethnography. And the main lesson is that the kitchen teaches abstinence from the wrong foods rather than gluttony with everything you have to.