A review by codexmendoza
Days in the Caucasus by Banine

5.0

Amusing and one of a kind. I was always bound to enraptured since I’m nothing if not a Commonwealth of Independent States weeb, but there’s more merit to this book than just novelty. Instead of — like many emigre memoirs — being a myopic lament of a lost society, the book is a clear eyed recollection of the tradition and secularism in the Azerbaijan of the author’s childhood and the ways they shaped both her (short lived) nation and her own person.

This book works because Banine has an adult’s understanding for her younger self and her extremely large and casually incestous family, but not much sentimentality for any of it.