The Tasters

8 hrs. 34 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Rosella Postorino

Narrator Alla Chovzhyk

Description

For the first time in Russian: the international bestseller by the Italian writer Rosella Postorino, winner of Italy’s most prestigious literary awards such as Strega, Campiello, and Un autore l’Europa—among them for this book.

This novel is based on a real story—on an interview given in 2012 by 95-year-old Margo Völk, the only survivor of the fifteen girls who in the Hitler camp “Wolfsschanze” (“Wolf’s Lair”) tried to eat food prepared for the Führer: he had a pathological fear that he might be poisoned. For Berlin-born Rosa Sauer (under this name, Margo Völk appears in the novel), who ended up in East Prussia almost by accident, this service allowed her, for the first time in years, to eat to her fill during the war—though the price of every meal could be death at any moment.

Just like Bernhard Schlink’s “The Reader,” “The Tasters” is less about the horrors of war than about fear and choice. About whether it’s possible to stay outside the conflict while serving the embodiment of world evil. What can and cannot be done to preserve hope for a future life, for the return of a husband from the front…?

In 2018, at the Moscow anniversary book fair Non/Fiction—where Italy was the honorary guest—Rosella Postorino presented “The Tasters” together with Guzel Yakhina, the winner of the “Big Book” and “Yasnaya Polyana” awards. “It doesn’t bother me that ‘The Tasters’ are compared to ‘The Reader,’” Postorino said. “On the contrary, it’s a great honor for me…”