“Russian Cuisine in Exile” is a collection of essays and sketches on gastronomic themes, written by Peter Weil and Alexander Genis in New York in the mid-1980s. It is in no way a cookbook, although practically every chapter is topped with a simple, yet elegant and vivid culinary recipe. What we have here is a real literary monument to history and culture—time-tested and having gathered a huge army of admirers. A monument to an entire civilization: first it formed on distant shores thanks to the efforts of the “third wave” of Russian emigration, and then it surprisingly organically blended into the world and order that emerged in a new Russia. Weil and Genis repeatedly astonish the reader with the precision of their observations and brilliant erudition. Their essays are devoted, as it becomes clearer with every page, not so much to Russian cuisine as to Russian people themselves (in the broadest, “geopolitical” sense of the word), to Russian life and Russian times. And the fact that each of these witty essays also offers us a purely gastronomic discovery is an additional gift prepared for us by the generous authors.