Books Bringing History to Life

Spring Break had me on a reading binge so while I haven't really cooked or baked anything special, I've spent many evenings curled up on the sofa with a stack of books.

History was my least favorite subject in school. Except maybe for PT (physical training) which was downright horrible, thanks to my inherent couch-potato-ness and the ill-tempered PT instructor Miss Ruby. But anyway, history class was tedious and I struggled to get it over with so I could get to the fun subjects like English and Biology. I wretchedly memorized seemingly random dates and wars and treaties without any context to what I was being made to learn.

It is only now, decades later, that I feel like I am re-learning history bit by bit, through books that are not history textbooks at all. Instead, they are novels set in particular historical periods, or mysteries set in foreign lands, or memoirs from a particular era. And thus, through the art of story-telling and the formation of an emotional connection, I am finally beginning to understand historical events and how they relate to politics and world events today. Here are three books I read last week, each of which provided a better history lesson than any textbook could.

Image: Goodreads

I have enjoyed all of Jhumpa Lahiri's books, especially her short stories, so I got into a months-long virtual queue at the library to get my hands on her latest novel, The Lowland. It has all the classic Jhumpa Lahiri features- roots in India, a move to the North-Eastern US, culture clash and a search for identity. All this is woven into a family saga spanning three generations.Two brothers grow up inseparable but their lives branch out as one gets entangled in the Bengali communist party and the dangerous and radical politics of the Naxalite movement while the other brother stays in the safety of academia and moves to the US. I've heard the word "Naxalite" hundreds of times without understanding at all what it was all about. This novel explained a great deal of the history and politics behind that movement. The story, however, was too heavy and sad. The characters too unwilling to change their situation. An emotional read, but I just wish the emotions were not all oppressively negative.

Image: Goodreads

Communism is also front and center in Anya Von Bremzen's Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing. The title is rich with irony, and the book is a highly personal, searing and funny romp through nearly a century of life in Soviet Russia- in Bremzen's words:  "All happy food memories are alike; all unhappy food memories are unhappy after their own fashion...Inevitably, a story about Soviet food is a chronicle of longing, of unrequited desire. So what happens when some of your most intense culinary memories involve foods you hadn't actually tasted? Memories of imaginings, of received histories; feverish collective yearning produced by seventy years of geopolitical isolation and scarcity..."

This book made me so nostalgic. You see, a few decades ago, India and Russia were socialist allies with a great deal of so-called cultural exchange: Russian book fairs in India and Hindi movie stars idolized in Russia, that sort of thing. The newspapers were full of mentions of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika. I grew up with Russian children's literature and a subscription to a Russian magazine called Misha. And their books and illustrations were quite rich and fantastic and very un-Disney if you know what I mean. The Adventures of Dennis (there was no menace with this Dennis, mind you) was my favorite Russian-translated book- and look, I found it reviewed here. My parents who are not known for throwing away things probably still have it. I remember a story where young Dennis asks his friend, "What are your favorite things?" The friend answered with a long list of irresistible food items that goes on for two whole pages. After this breathless menu recitation, the friend asks the same question to Dennis who says, "I like kittens. And grandma". Such a funny-sweet-sad story of children who know quite a bit of hunger and scarcity. Bremzen's memoir explained exactly what the country was going through to produce a story like that.

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking has a whole chapter on the favorite Soviet celebratory dish Salat Olivier or what I knew as my mother's Russian salad- cubes of boiled potato, carrot, peas and pineapple chunks suspended in a homemade mayo dressing. Bremzen's book will be one of my favorite reads of 2014.

Image: Goodreads

War and unrest through a child's eyes. This theme comes to life yet again in the graphic novel, A Game for Swallows: To Die, to Leave, to Return by Zeina Abirached. The bold and beautiful black-white illustrations are a contrast to grimy, war-torn Beirut described in the book, which talks about a single evening in the life of young Zeina and her family and their neighbors, huddled from the bombing in the foyer of their apartment. Behind the anecdote was a history lesson in the 15 year long civil war of Lebanon. And by the way, for you time-pressed folks, this is a short graphic novella that you can devour in an hour or two.

This beautiful and touching book reminded me strongly of a friend in graduate school (we've since lost touch) who was born and raised in Beirut during this 15 year period. War was a fact of life for him; after all, he knew nothing else until he was a teenager. He told me that night after night, his mother would serve dinner during the ceasefire. When he moved in his teens to a place where there was no war, he wondered, "If there's no ceasefire, how do people know when to eat dinner?" I remember when he told me this, I felt such a pang of pain in my heart. Please can we stop waging wars?

That's three memorable books and I have several more that I'm looking forward to. What are you reading these days?