But she’s also so unique, so engaging, that it’s impossible to stop reading. As a mother, she almost makes Joan Crawford look like June Cleaver. Rosa is cruel, impatient, angry and, quite possibly, insane. Rosa attempts to abort her daughter’s pregnancy, but it doesn’t work: months later, Sulfia gives birth to Aminat, and Rosa almost immediately decides to take the child as her own, rebuffing all of Sulfia’s attempts to raise her own daughter. The novel starts with Rosa, a Russian of Tartar extraction, listening to her daughter Sulfia-whom Rosa considers “rather stupid” and “deformed”-admit that she’s pregnant. It doesn’t take long for the reader of The Hottest Dishes-the second novel by Russian-German novelist Bronsky-to realize that Rosa is as unhinged as she is completely un-self-aware. He often looked at me that way.ĭieter’s not the only one. Nothing bad happens to people here.”ĭieter looked at me as if I were crazy. Rosa, who prides herself on her unfailing sangfroid and icy composure, attempts to take control: Rosa’s granddaughter, Aminat, has become violently ill, and their flatmate Dieter has started to panic. There’s a moment in Alina Bronsky’s The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine when Rosa, the book’s comically antiheroic narrator, tries to restore order to a chaotic situation.
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