The Tsar’s Dwarf
By Peter Fogtdal
Hawthorne Books and Literary Arts

Peter Fogtdal has crafted an immediately captivating character, Sørine Bentsdatter, a Danish dwarf, in his first novel translated into English. Even at the dawn of the 18th century, Sørine refuses to cower before the sideways glances and stares of those who consider her an issue of the devil. She faces castigators and demonizers, but even worse are the specters that haunt her waking life. She struggles relentlessly to maintain personal dignity—the novel is teeming with ribaldry, for example, and Sorine’s conviction to hold her own makes her an admirable study. 

This historical novel opens in Copenhagen, where Sørine is stuffed into a tremendous cake from which she must emerge as a gift from King Frederik IV to Peter the Great, the tsar of Russia. The tsar accepts delightedly—he’s a collector of dwarves—and thus begins the journey of Sørine, first to Amsterdam, and then to St. Petersburg, where she and her dwarf cohorts entertain the tsar’s court. “The courtiers once again stare at me with a condescending expression—the same way that everyone else looks at me, with a despicable mixture of contempt and joviality,” she notes. The enchanting details of scenery provide a rich tapestry of historical Northern Europe, and Sørine’s struggle to exist in a world when dwarves weren’t even considered human elicits just enough sympathy to make her very compelling. 
         
Peter Fogtdal teaches foreign literature and creative writing at Portland State University, and The Tsar’s Dwarf is his 12th novel. The translation is by Tina Nunnerly, best known for her award-winning translation of Peter Hoeg’s Smila’s Sense of Snow. Fogtdal splits his time between Portland and Copenhagen and said he “cried like a baby” when he parted ways with Sørine at the end of the novel.

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Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters
Translated by Edward Snow and Michael Winkler
Norton

Gone are the days of long correspondences written in ink, possibly from a quill, on paper, slid thoughtfully or stuffed irreverently into an envelope, walked to the post office, and then eventually hand-delivered to the doorstep of the elated recipient. What will future generations know of our affections? Most probably they won’t care as they activate an embedded device, sending a message in their preferred format, keeping it short. If the idea makes you nervous—as it should—allow yourself to bask in Rilke and Andreas-Salomé, A Love Story in Letters, documenting the “most intense and enduring friendship” of the poet René Maria Rilke’s life (he changed his name to Rainer at Lou Andreas-Salomé’s urging). The pair first met in 1897 in Munich. He proceeded to send her “copies of his poems, along with effusive letters, which she shrugged off as an annoyance.” In the end his love won her over, if only for a while. Perhaps it was Rilke’s grandiose expressions of love, flattering and a bit too syrupy, that she couldn’t bear. After a stormy and creatively productive affair, only her friendship endured for him. Even though she couldn’t live with his emotional volatility, Andreas-Salomé recognized Rilke as a “supremely modern artist.”

This epistolary collection contains amorous confessions, like, “I am yours as the last little star is the night’s, even though the night may be scarcely aware of it and have no knowledge of its glimmer.” But it is most rich in letters between the two as friends, writers, contemporaries, and critics of each other’s work. In July 1913, Andreas-Salomé writes, “Your whole work opens out before me now like a vast landscape, everywhere revealing paths I had never seen before, and receding into horizons one knows will open, because light comes from there and spreads across the landscape, and because it is the light of dawn.”

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The Farm to Table Cookbook: The Art of Eating Locally
By Ivy Manning
Sasquatch Books
           
With the price of gas, the questionable additives and processing in conventionally produced food, and an ever more refined palate in the U.S. for fresh and healthy food, “farm to table” shopping and cooking is gaining favor. These days, farmers’ markets often can’t keep up with demand, selling out of their wares before the day is done. What do people do with that abundance of fresh produce? Ask Ivy Manning, who has compiled The Farm to Table Cookbook, featuring recipes from a smattering of the best chefs in the Northwest.
         
Organized by the four seasons, Manning’s guide helps you shop, with recipes in mind, for ingredients likely to be available from local farms and at farmers’ markets or specialty food stores. At the beginning of each chapter she has a “Meet the Producer” section, where you get the chance to peer into the lives of characters like Pat Morford, a chèvre goat cheese producer, or Barb Foulke, who works a 60-acre hazelnut farm. The book also provides primers for identifying the perfect heirloom tomato, pear, or winter squash, but of course, the pièces de résistance are the exquisite recipes drawn from revolutionaries in the “farm to table” feeding frenzy.
         
Manning’s book will soon be indispensable, with recipes like crepes stuffed with butternut squash and bacon from Jason Owens of Simpatica Dining Hall in Portland, sage-braised pork shoulder with herb spaetzle from Benn Stenn of Hood River’s Celilo Restaurant and Bar in Hood River, or—perfect for a cold fall evening—Chef Melissa Lehmkuhl of Roux in Portland’s divinely inspired toffee apple upside down cake. Yum!
         
Ivy Manning is a multi-talented personal chef, cooking teacher, and “farmers’ market aficionado.” She has written for Cooking Light, Fine Cooking, Sunset, and The Oregonian. Manning lives in Portland, reportedly “in a house with a tiny kitchen.”

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