Red Sands: Reportage and Recipes Through Central Asia, from Hinterland to Heartland

Description

Red Sands, the follow-up to Caroline Eden's multi-award-winning Black Sea, is a reimagining of traditional travel writing using food as the jumping-off point to explore Central Asia. In a quest to better understand this vast heartland of Asia, Caroline navigates a course from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the sun-ripened orchards of the Fergana Valley. A book filled with human stories, forgotten histories and tales of adventure, Caroline is a reliable guide using food as her passport to enter lives, cities and landscapes rarely written about. Lit up by emblematic recipes, Red Sands is an utterly unique book, delving into 'the last blank on the map' while bringing in universal themes that relate to us all: hope, hunger, longing, love and the joys of eating well on the road.

Caroline Eden is a writer and journalist contributing to the travel, food and arts pages of the Guardian, Financial Times and the Times Literary Supplement. Specialising in the former Soviet Union, Caroline's previous book, Black Sea, won the Guild of Food Writers Food Book Award 2019, the James Avery Award at the Andre Simon Food & Drink Book Awards 2019, the Art of Eating Prize for Best Food Book of the Year, and the Edward Stanford Travel Award for Best Food & Drink Book. She lives in Edinburgh.

Gripping culinary travels. * New York Times * Caroline Eden takes us through the heart of Asia as she eats sweet winter melons in Uzbekistan, gaudy cream cakes in Kazakhstan and rich lamb and quince plovs in Kyrgyzstan. Every character she meets and every meal she shares leads to a deeper understanding of place and people, every recipe is a postcard from a world few of us know. Beautifully written, quietly personal, generous, rich with detail, I absolutely loved this book. * Diana Henry * Eden's beautifully observed travelogue includes essays on the connections she made and thorough examinations of the food she tried. It is as much a book for the bedside or coffee table as the kitchen counter. She has rightly won awards for her remarkable talent for telling stories that take the reader right to the heart of her experiences. * The Sunday Times Magazine * She is a great writer... If you want to lose yourself, I highly recommend this book. * Sheila Dillon, BBC Radio 4 The Food Programme, 'Cookbooks of 2020' * There is nobody writing about food at the moment who's committed to this level of immersion and it rings out in every line. * Financial Times * Eden writes beautifully, not just about food... but about what it means to live an unchanging way of life in a fast-changing world. * The Sunday Times Culture * A fascinating fusion of travel and food writing. * The Herald * If reading about exotic and colourful lands makes you feel better about not having any proper holidays this year, escape with this book. * The Scotsman * Rich, contemplative, and full of food that will enchant, it reports back from lands you may not be all that familiar with. * Press Association * Caroline Eden's prior work, The Black Sea, was one of the most awarded cookbooks of 2019, a sweeping travelogue told through the lens of food. This book moves east, roughly from the Caspian Sea to the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan, again telling stories of Eden's travels and histories of the region, studded with recipes. * Stained Page News * Contemplative and full of food that will enchant, it reports back from lands you may not be all that familiar with. * RTE *