The Hunger Book: A Memoir from Communist Poland (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780814258781)

"A searing memoir about growing up behind the Iron Curtain, motherhood, addiction, and finding sustenance in the natural world." -Kirkus

In The Hunger Book, Agata Izabela Brewer evokes her Polish childhood under Communism, where the warmth of her grandparents' love and the scent of mushrooms drying in a tiny apartment are as potent as the deprivations and traumas of life with a terrifyingly unstable, alcoholic single mother. Brewer indelibly renders stories of foraging for food, homemade potato vodka (one of the Eastern Bloc's more viable currencies), blood sausage, sparrows plucked and fried with linseed oil, and the respite of a country garden plot, all amid Stalinist-era apartment buildings, food shortages, martial law, and nuclear disaster in nearby Ukraine.

Brewer reflects on all of this from her immigrant's vantage point, as she wryly tries to convince her children to enjoy the mushrooms she gathers from a roadside and grieves when they choose to go by Americanized versions of their Polish names. Hunting mushrooms, like her childhood, carried both reward and mortal peril. The Hunger Book, which includes recipes, is an unforgettable meditation on motherhood and addiction, resilience and love.

Author: Agata Izabela Brewer
ISBN-10: 0814258786
ISBN-13: 9780814258781
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/29/2023
Pages: 240
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.69lbs
Size: 8.52h x 5.57w x 0.45d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2023
Foreword 08/27/2023