The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

This is a fictionalized version of the story of Doctor Zhivago and the CIA's use of it--funnily enough, there is a non-fiction book about part of this story, The CIA Book Club that you can follow up with if you want the more factual version. This is two stories, one from the Russian side and one from the American side, and they are woven together. At the height of the cold war, the CIA ran an initiative known as “cultural diplomacy”. Following the premise that “great art comes from true freedom”, the agency seized on painting, music and literature as effective tools for promoting the western world’s values, and funded abstract expressionism exhibitions and jazz tours. But when it came to the country that produced Tolstoy, Pushkin and Gogol – a nation that, might value literature like the Americans value freedom (or at least we used to) – the focus was always going to be on the written word. And her subject, the part the CIA played in bringing Boris Pasternak’s masterpiece Doctor Zhivago to worldwide recognition, was the jewel in cultural diplomacy’s crown. In 1955 rumours began to circulate that Pasternak, hitherto known largely as a poet, having survived a heart attack and Stalin’s purges, was ailing and politically compromised but had nonetheless managed to finish his magnum opus. The sweeping, complex historical epic – and simple love story – that is Doctor Zhivago had been a decade in the writing under the most adverse circumstances imaginable: the imprisonment of Pasternak’s lover, Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya; the death in the gulag of his friend and fellow writer Osip Mandelstam and the suicides of two others in his circle, Paolo Iashvili and Marina Tsvetaeva; constant surveillance and his own ill health. Because of its subversive emphasis on the individual and its critical stance on the October Revolution, no publishing house in the Eastern bloc would touch it. It was smuggled out by an Italian publishing house and this is the story of what happened to get it back into Russia. It is a well told story, and one that lays out why women who were of great use during the war and then discarded in the peace might have been tempted with becoming double agents for oh so many reasons.

Bacira, Madrid, Spain

This was absolutely the best deal of the trip, and an excellent meal. The tasting menu was an excellent deal and the wine pairing was even bettr--well chosen wines, generous portions, and all from Spain. I would highly recommend you add this to your Madrid itinerary. It is a Bib Gourmand restaurant, which is often our favorite type of restaurant, and here is from the Michelin website: A perfect example of friendship, hard work and, above all, an unconditional love for cooking. Here, the three owner-chefs at the helm, Carlos Langreo, Vicente de la Red and Gabriel Zapata, each specialise in a different type of cuisine (traditional Mediterranean, Japanese and Nikkei) but who are receptive to new trends and an inclination towards fusion cooking. The atmosphere here is both welcoming and informal with a vintage decor that includes slender wrought-iron columns. There are two tasting menus and we went for the long one--perhaps erroneaous as we could barely move afterwards, but overall a spectacular meal.

The Intuitionists by Colin Whitehead

There are a few living authors who are still writing whose work is so compelling that I seek out their new work, and in this case, am working on the books they wrote before I fell hard for them as a reader. The first book I read was Sag Harbor, and while it didn't knock my socks off as a work of fiction per se, it was so unusual in terms of the setting and subject, an entry into a world that is likely well known to African Americans but was completely unknown to me. So when I saw this on a "Staff Picks" table at my local library, I picked it up, and I would encourage you to do so as well. This book, his first, is set in a steampunky alternate mid-20th century, where elevators are the most important public conveyances in the world, and the people who inspect them basically run the city. There are two types of elevator inspectors: the first is the Empiricists (i.e. the traditionalists), who use close physical examinations to make their inspections, measuring and checking and confirming with evidence. The second type of inspectors are the Intuitionists, who inspect elevators (lifts) not by measuring anything, but by riding the elevators and feeling, sensing, knowing, what is happening to the machine in the parts they cannot see--there is some allegorical magic to be had here, as well as some manipulation for political gain. The protagonist of the novel is Lila Mae Watson, the first black woman to be employed by the city as an elevator (lift) inspector. She is also an intuitionist. As a “representative” of three different types of progressivism within the city, she is constantly being watched. To be an intuitionist is to be in the minority, to be black and an intuitionist is to be in a tiny minority, but to be black, female and an intuitionist makes her a truly unique individual. The corrupt, conservative, boss of the inspectorate want to make an example of her failing, and likewise their rival factions are keen for her to succeed.