Broccoli And Other Tales Of Food And Love

Each of Lara Vapnyar's six stories invites us into a world where food and love intersect, along with the overlapping pleasures and frustrations of Vapnyar's uniquely captivating characters. Meet Nina, a recent arrival from Russia, for whom colorful vegetables represent her own fresh hopes and dreams . . . Luda and Milena, who battle over a widower in their English class with competing recipes for cheese puffs, spinach pies, and meatballs . . . and Sergey, who finds more comfort in the borscht made by a paid female companion than in her sexual ministrations. They all crave the taste and smell of home, wherever—and with whomever—that may turn out to be. A roundup of recipes are the final taste of this delicious collection.

A New York Times Editor’s Choice As a young girl, Katya Geller learned from her mother that math was the answer to everything. Now, approaching forty, she finds this wisdom tested: she has lost the love of her life, she is in the middle of a divorce, and has just found out that her mother is dying. Nothing is adding up. With humor, intelligence, and unfailing honesty, Katya traces back her life’s journey: her childhood in Soviet Russia, her parents’ great love, the death of her father, her mother’s career as a renowned mathematician, and their immigration to the United States. She is, by turns, an adrift newlywed, an ESL teacher in an office occupied by witches and mediums, a restless wife, an accomplished writer, a flailing mother of two, a grieving daughter, and, all the while, a woman caught up in the most common misfortune of all—falling in love. Award-winning author Lara Vapnyar delivers an unabashedly frank and darkly comic tale of coming of age in middle age. Divide Me by Zerois almost unclassifiable—a stylistically original, genre-defying mix of classic Russian novel, American self-help book, Soviet math textbook, sly writing manual, and, at its center, a universal story with unforgettable lessons for us all.

In recent decades, globalization has led to increased mobility and interconnectedness. For a growing number of people, contemporary life entails new local and transnational interdependencies which transform individual and collective allegiances. Contemporary literature often reflects these changes through its exploration of migrant experiences and transcultural identities. Calling into question traditional definitions of culture, many recent works of poetry and prose fiction go beyond the spatial boundaries of a given state, emphasizing instead the mixing and collision of languages, cultures, and identities. In doing so, they also challenge recent and contemporary discourses about cultural identities, fostering a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of identity-formation processes in diverse transcultural frameworks. This volume analyses how traditional understandings of culture, as well as literary representations of identity constructs, can be reconceptualized from a transcultural perspective. In four thematic sections focusing on migration, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and literary translingualism, the twelve essays included in this volume explore various facets of transculturality in contemporary poetry and fiction from around the world. Contributors: Malin Lidström Brock, Katherina Dodou, Pilar Cuder–Domínguez, Stefan Helgesson, Christoph Houswitschka, Carly McLaughlin, Kristin Rebien, J.B. Rollins, Karen L. Ryan, Eric Sellin, Mats Tegmark, Carmen Zamorano Llena. Irene Gilsenan Nordin is Professor of English Literature at Dalarna University, Sweden. She is founder and director of DUCIS (Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies) and leads Dalarna University’s Transcultural Identities research group. Julie Hansen is Research Fellow at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies and teaches Russian literature in the Department of Modern Languages at Uppsala University, Sweden. Carmen Zamorano Llena is Associate Professor of English Literature at Dalarna University, Sweden, and member of Dalarna University’s Transcultural Identities research group.

This book is a study of the short story, one of the widest taught genres in English literature, from an innovative methodological perspective. Both liminality and the short story are well-researched phenomena, but the combination of both is not frequent. This book discusses the relevance of the concept of liminality for the short story genre and for short story cycles, emphasizing theoretical perspectives, methodological relevance and applicability. Liminality as a concept of demarcation and mediation between different processual stages, spatial complexes, and inner states is of obvious importance in an age of global mobility, digital networking, and interethnic transnationality. Over the last decade, many symposia, exhibitions, art, and publications have been produced which thematize liminality, covering a wide range of disciplines including literary, geographical, psychological and ethnicity studies. Liminal structuring is an essential aspect of the aesthetic composition of short stories and the cultural messages they convey. On account of its very brevity and episodic structure, the generic liminality of the short story privileges the depiction of transitional situations and fleeting moments of crisis or decision. It also addresses the moral transgressions, heterotopic orders, and forms of ambivalent self-reflection negotiated within the short story's confines. This innovative collection focuses on both the liminality of the short story and on liminality in the short story.

With wit and wisdom, the bibliophile's Ebert & Roeper recommend more than 600 books based on what women care about most. Between the Covers is organized around their wide-ranging curiosity—about themselves, friends and family, the larger world—and their concerns, from health to sex to managing their finances. With such sections as “Babes We Love” (Role Models Real and Imagined), “The Babe Inside” (Focusing on Body and Soul), and “Love, Sex & Second Chances,” this unique collection of fiction and nonfiction reflects how women really read.

"New York Times Magazine"-food editor Hesser has showcased the food-inspired recollections of some of America's leading writers. "Eat, Memory" collects the 26 best stories and recipes from some of the playwrights, novelists, and journalists featured in her column.

Tanya is a typical teenager living with her bookish professor mother in a cramped Soviet apartment. She is obsessed with Dostoyevksy, and noticing that he always portrays his mistress and muse in his novels–never his wife–she determines to become a companion to a great writer. Her opportunity comes when, as a college graduate newly emigrated to America, she attends a Manhattan bookstore reading by Mark Schneider, a Significant New York Novelist. Tanya quickly moves in with Mark, ready to dazzle in bed, to serve and inspire . . . if only he would spend a little more time writing. But as she struggles to better understand her role as Muse, Tanya also learns more than she expected about the destiny she has imagined for herself. A touching and very funny novel in the great tradition of Russian realism, Memoirs of a Muse is also a lively meditation on the mysteries and absurdities of artistic inspiration.

An essential tool for assisting leisure readers interested in topics surrounding food, this unique book contains annotations and read-alikes for hundreds of nonfiction titles about the joys of comestibles and cooking. Food Lit: A Reader's Guide to Epicurean Nonfiction provides a much-needed resource for librarians assisting adult readers interested in the topic of food—a group that is continuing to grow rapidly. Containing annotations of hundreds of nonfiction titles about food that are arranged into genre and subject interest categories for easy reference, the book addresses a diversity of reading experiences by covering everything from foodie memoirs and histories of food to extreme cuisine and food exposés. Author Melissa Stoeger has organized and described hundreds of nonfiction titles centered on the themes of food and eating, including life stories, history, science, and investigative nonfiction. The work emphasizes titles published in the past decade without overlooking significant benchmark and classic titles. It also provides lists of suggested read-alikes for those titles, and includes several helpful appendices of fiction titles featuring food, food magazines, and food blogs.