Savage Feast
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
Boris Fishman was born in Minsk, Belarus, and emigrated to the United States in 1988. He is the author of the novels A Replacement Life (which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association's Sophie Brody Medal) and Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Savage Feast, a family memoir told through recipes. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, New York magazine, and many other publications. He has taught at Princeton University and the University of Montana, and now teaches at The University of Austin.
"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"
"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
"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
"This beautifully written memoir is a wonderful story about family, love, and connecting with your roots." -- Library Journal
"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
"If you aren't hungry when you start reading this book, you will be by the time you've finished." -- Bookish
