Savage Feast - by Boris Fishman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The acclaimed author of A Replacement Life shifts between heartbreak and humor in this gorgeously told recipe-filled memoir. A story of family, immigration, and love--and an epic meal--Savage Feast explores the challenges of navigating two cultures from an unusual angle.

A revealing personal story and family memoir told through meals and recipes, Savage Feast begins with Boris's childhood in Soviet Belarus, where good food was often worth more than money. He describes the unlikely dish that brought his parents together and how years of Holocaust hunger left his grandmother so obsessed with bread that she always kept five loaves on hand. She was the stove magician and Boris' grandfather the master black marketer who supplied her, evading at least one firing squad on the way. These spoils kept Boris' family--Jews who lived under threat of discrimination and violence--provided-for and protected.

Despite its abundance, food becomes even more important in America, which Boris' family reaches after an emigration through Vienna and Rome filled with marvel, despair, and bratwurst. How to remain connected to one's roots while shedding their trauma? The ambrosial cooking of Oksana, Boris's grandfather's Ukrainian home aide, begins to show him the way. His quest takes him to a farm in the Hudson River Valley, the kitchen of a Russian restaurant on the Lower East Side, a Native American reservation in South Dakota, and back to Oksana's kitchen in Brooklyn. His relationships with women--troubled, he realizes, for reasons that go back many generations--unfold concurrently, finally bringing him, after many misadventures, to an American soulmate.

Savage Feast is Boris' tribute to food, that secret passage to an intimate conversation about identity, belonging, family, displacement, and love.

From the Back Cover

The acclaimed author of A Replacement Life shifts between heartbreak and humor in this gorgeously told memoir. A story of family, immigration, and love--and an epic meal--Savage Feast explores the challenges of navigating two cultures from an unusual angle.

Beginning with Boris's childhood in Soviet Belarus, where good food was often valued more than money, Savage Feast, a revealing family memoir, told through meals and recipes, describes the unlikely dish that brought his parents together and how years of hunger during the Holocaust left his grandmother so obsessed with bread that she always kept five loaves on hand. She was the stove magician, while Boris's grandfather was the master black marketeer who supplied her, evading at least one firing squad along the way. These spoils kept Boris's family--Jews living under the threat of discrimination and violence--always provided for and protected.

Although food was in abundance, it became even more important once Boris's family reached America, after emigrating through Vienna and Rome--a journey filled with marvel, despair, and bratwurst. How to remain connected to one's roots while shedding trauma? The ambrosial cooking of Oksana, the Ukrainian home aide for Boris's grandfather, shows him the way. His quest takes him to a farm in the Hudson River valley, the kitchen of a Russian restaurant on the Lower East Side, a Native American reservation in South Dakota, and back to Oksana's kitchen in Brooklyn. His relationships with women--troubled, he realizes, for reasons that go back many generations--unfold all at once, finally bringing him, after many misadventures, to an American soul mate.

Savage Feast is Boris's tribute to food, that secret passage to an intimate conversation about identity, belonging, family, displacement, and love.

Review Quotes

"Fishman's writing is brisk and vivid, and despite generations' worth of trauma the family suffered, from pervasive anti-Semitism to the brutalities of World War II, his memoir is often funny... This book departs from other memoirs: Most chapters end with detailed recipes, adding a lovely, homey dimension." - BookPage
"Mr. Fishman's story--as a refugee, a seeker and an insatiable eater--is inherently compelling. But the book's brilliance lies in the author's self-awareness and honest appraisal of his, and his family's, shortcomings. By the last third of the book it is nearly impossible not to be rooting for the author. Mr. Fishman's struggles and triumphs are uniquely his own, but his most primal desires are universal: to be seen and understood by loved ones, and to eat like a czar." - Wall Street Journal
"Terrifically nuanced and multidimensional...I've been reading every food memoir available, including those by Anthony Bourdain, Gabrielle Hamilton, Ruth Reichl, Michael Pollan, Samin Nosrat, Michael Twitty, and now Boris Fishman. His is the most focused and most multilayered of these wonderful books." - Panthea Reid, Philadelphia Inquirer
"As Fishman suggests with this profusion of stories, all feasts are savage, in the sense that cuisine, like culture, is ultimately wild, feral, untamed." - Paste
"If you aren't hungry when you start reading this book, you will be by the time you've finished." - Bookish
"Mapped in recipes, a savage landscape of Jewish hunger...Boris Fishman brings the fraught role of food in Jewish culture to evocative life in his new memoir...Suspended between his Soviet childhood -- Fishman was nine when his family left Minsk -- and an American life from which he feels fundamentally distant, the home Fishman eventually finds is in food...Really, what it comes down to, is a hunger for something like truth. A true identity. A true relationship. A true understanding of his family's history, and the ways it must and must not form his life." - The Forward
"This rich, memorable exploration of immigrant identity, culture clash and Soviet cuisine will linger long after the book has been closed or the last of the dishes within have been served." - Shelf Talker
"This beautifully written memoir is a wonderful story about family, love, and connecting with your roots." - Library Journal
"Given his literary gifts, his intelligence, his keen sense of humor, and his fascinating immigrant family history, it would have been a crime if Boris Fishman had not written this book. Like all good recipes, the ones in these pages will give you cravings, but the story itself could not be more satisfying. A superb memoir--artful, ambitious, deeply soulful, often hilarious--by one of our cleverest and most original writers." - Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend, National Book Award Winner
"A tightly written page-turner about the author's childhood in Minsk, his extended family and their odyssey from Belarus to New York (via Vienna and Rome in the 1980s) as well as his efforts to conquer his own demons. While reading it, I was frequently tempted to head to the kitchen and fry some onions, the step that starts many of the Eastern European recipes in his book." - Florence Fabricant, New York Times, "Front Burner"