Black Sea

‘A dark bowl full of wheat is the sky with stars’, Bulgarian proverb

‘This was Europe’s easternmost rim… Cherno More, Kara Su, Marea
Neagra, the Euxine, the Black Sea … Constanta, Odessa, Batumi,
Trebizond, Constantinople …  the names were intoxicating.' Patrick
Leigh Fermor, Words of Mercury

This is the tale of a journey between three great cities  – Odessa, built on a dream by Catherine the Great, through Istanbul, the fulcrum balancing Europe and Asia and on to tough, stoic, lyrical Trabzon.

With a nose for a good recipe and an ear for an extraordinary story, Caroline Eden travels from Odessa to Bessarabia, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey’s Black Sea region, exploring interconnecting culinary cultures. From the Jewish table of Odessa, to meeting the last fisherwoman of Bulgaria and charting the legacies of the White Russian émigrés in Istanbul, Caroline gives readers a unique insight into a part of the world that is both shaded by darkness and illuminated by light.

Meticulously researched and documenting unprecedented meetings with remarkable individuals, Black Sea is like no other piece of travel writing. Packed with rich photography and sumptuous food, this biography of a region, its people and its recipes truly breaks new ground.

“'Witty, wry and wise . a wholly original and vibrant new format . a triumph.' -Historian and author Owen Matthews, Cornucopia Magazine -- -”

A genuinely erudite dive into the cultures that meet at the Black Sea. Beautiful enough for the coffee table but fascinating enough for the nightstand and useful in the kitchen, too. Tim Hayward, Financial Times
It’s packed with human stories as well as history, giving the recipes a significance and resonance. Diana Henry, Sunday Telegraph
It’s her writing – elegant, fluid and as mesmerising as the Black Sea itself – that captures and holds your attention and imagination throughout this journey. Julia Platt Leonard, The Independent
Eden’s blazing talent and unabashedly greedy curiosity will have you strapped in beside her... If Sybille Bedford or Patrick Leigh Fermor had included a few recipes in their accounts of their journeys, you’d know exactly where to shelve this gem. Christine Muhlke, The New York Times
The food in Black Sea is wonderful, but it’s Eden’s prose that really elevates this book to the extraordinary. She captures people, history, and the ineffable soul of cities with astonishing, almost novelistic precision — more than once, even in the headnotes, I felt myself getting lost in the world of the story. I can’t remember any cookbook that’s drawn me in quite like this. Helen Rosner, Art of Eating judge

Caroline Eden is a travel and food writer focusing on the former Soviet Union and south Asia. She has written for various publications including the Daily Telegraph, Financial Times and the Guardian. She writes a weekly travel page for London’s Metro newspaper. Caroline's first book, Samarkand, won the Guild of Food Writers Award for best food and travel book in 2017. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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