The book was shortlisted for the BBC Book of the Year 2021.
“Squash Compote” (Komora publishing house, 2020) is a series of reportage sketches and essays describing how a whole generation of Ukrainians grew up on the background of the breaking of eras and political systems. This book is about what it was like to live in the 90s, when “pineapple” squash compote and “mushrooms” from eggplants were born, when everyone was gripped by a total knitting mania, people grew in the habit of stocking absolutely everything, and the first pads have just begun to change the lives of Ukrainian women.
The author, relying on her childhood memories, tells how the punitive gastronomy of that time worked, how the famous good-neighborly relations were often manifested, and how Abkhazia hosted Ukrainian schoolchildren a few months before the war.
