Black Sea - by Caroline Eden (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Art of Eating Prize 2020
Winner of the Guild of Food Writers' Best Food Book Award 2019
Winner of the Edward Stanford Travel Food and Drink Book Award 2019
Winner of the John Avery Award at the André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards for 2018
Shortlisted for the James Beard International Cookbook Award
'The next best thing to actually travelling with Caroline Eden - a warm, erudite and greedy guide - is to read her. This is my kind of book.' - Diana Henry 'Eden's blazing talent and unabashedly greedy curiosity will have you strapped in beside her' - Christine Muhlke, The New York Times
'The food in Black Sea is wonderful, but it's Eden's prose that really elevates this book to the extraordinary... I can't remember any cookbook that's drawn me in quite like this.' - Helen Rosner, Art of Eating judge

This is the tale of a journey between three great cities - Odesa, Ukraine's celebrated port city, through Istanbul, the fulcrum balancing Europe and Asia and on to tough, stoic, lyrical Trabzon. With a nose for a good recipe and an ear for an extraordinary story, Caroline Eden travels from Odesa to Bessarabia, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey's Black Sea region, exploring interconnecting culinary cultures. From the Jewish table of Odesa, to meeting the last fisherwoman of Bulgaria and charting the legacies of the White Russian émigrés in Istanbul, Caroline gives readers a unique insight into a part of the world that is both shaded by darkness and illuminated by light. In this updated edition of the book, Caroline reflects on the events of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent impact of the war on the people of the wider region. How Odesa, defiant against shelling and blackouts, has gained UNESCO protection while in Istanbul, over lunch with a Bosphorus ship-spotter, she finds out about the role of the Black Sea in the war and how Russians are smuggling stolen grain from Ukraine. Meticulously researched and documenting unprecedented meetings with remarkable individuals, Black Sea is like no other piece of travel writing. Packed with rich photography and sumptuous food, this biography of a region, its people and its recipes truly breaks new ground.

Review Quotes

A genuinely erudite dive into the cultures that meet at the Black Sea. Beautiful enough for the coffee table but fascinating enough for the nightstand and useful in the kitchen, too.--Tim Hayward, Financial Times

Eden's blazing talent and unabashedly greedy curiosity will have you strapped in beside her... If Sybille Bedford or Patrick Leigh Fermor had included a few recipes in their accounts of their journeys, you'd know exactly where to shelve this gem.--Christine Muhlke, The New York Times

It's her writing - elegant, fluid and as mesmerising as the Black Sea itself - that captures and holds your attention and imagination throughout this journey.--Julia Platt Leonard, The Independent

It's packed with human stories as well as history, giving the recipes a significance and resonance.--Diana Henry, Sunday Telegraph

The food in Black Sea is wonderful, but it's Eden's prose that really elevates this book to the extraordinary. She captures people, history, and the ineffable soul of cities with astonishing, almost novelistic precision -- more than once, even in the headnotes, I felt myself getting lost in the world of the story. I can't remember any cookbook that's drawn me in quite like this.--Helen Rosner, Art of Eating judge

About the Author

Caroline Eden is an author, journalist and book critic regularly contributing to The Guardian, Financial Times and The Times Literary Supplement. Her book Black Sea won the Guild of Food Writers Best Food Book Award 2019, the Edward Stanford Travel Food and Drink Book Award 2019, and the Art of Eating Prize 2020, as well as being shortlisted for the James Beard Award International Cookbook Award. Her more recent book, Red Sands, was winner of the André Simon Food Book Award 2020. Caroline lives in Edinburgh.