Picture book about markets by Anna Desnitskaya and Maria Bakhareva | EUROtoday

AFor Maria Bakhareva and Anna Desnitskaya, the markets of their dwelling nation most likely appear the furthest away. Further than the central market in Santiago de Chile with its numerous seafood or the floating market in Bangkok with the swarms of fireflies.

Because Bakhareva, the writer of “Markets Around the World,” and Desnitskaya, the book’s illustrator, come from Moscow. Desnitskaya was in Cyprus when Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022. She by no means returned dwelling. Instead, the 36-year-old artist emigrated to Israel together with her household. She and the writer Bakhareva are sending slogans of perseverance to Ukraine from exile. Desnitskaya’s husband, a graphic designer, posts offended messages to Putin’s regime on Facebook: “Curse you, Russia’s military apparatus.”

For Desnitskaya, nonetheless, anger doesn’t appear to be an emotion via which she expresses herself. Her drawings are at all times mild. When she talks about unhealthy occasions, like within the book “In an Old House in Moscow,” about the tyranny underneath Stalin, a darkish veil falls over the photographs.

Children’s book, cookbook and journey information

But principally it is the nice occasions that Desnitskaya illustrates. This primarily consists of journeys the place the sensory impressions are so quite a few that they change into hidden object photos. This was the case within the book about the practice journey “From Moscow to Vladivostok”, which was printed in 2021, and that is how it is going to be within the not too long ago printed quantity “All aboard!” about subways. And so it’s, after all, in “Markets around the World”, the primary joint challenge between Desnitskaya and 44-year-old Maria Bakhareva, who has beforehand written journey guides and restaurant suggestions however by no means a kids’s book. In this case, that simply makes it extra attention-grabbing, as a result of “Markets Around the World” effortlessly manages to be many issues on the similar time: a kids’s book, after all, but in addition a cookbook, a journey information, a hidden object book and a espresso desk book. The book is so ornamental that it seems nice on the couch desk and so useful that you would be able to simply take it with you on household trip.

Bakhareva and Desnitskaya current 24 markets, two per nation per 30 days. They are sorted by season: When the primary flowers bloom in Nice and Lyon, the writer and illustrator ship us to France. When the solar is gentle in winter, go to Morocco. There we discover ways to cook dinner tagine and what you should purchase for the smallest denomination of the Moroccan foreign money dirham: a plate of lentil soup.

Desnitskaya does not simply give attention to the plain. In an interview she stated that solely via actual particulars do photographs come to life, even when readers could not even discover them. In “Markets around the World” she herself traced the photographs of the meals on supply on the promoting posters of meals stalls; the merchants and prospects put on shirts with well-known logos, they speak on the cellphone, put on sun shades or rub their drained eyes. She does not gloss over issues: In Thailand, Desnitskaya reveals the geese and chickens locked in slender cages, ready to be purchased and slaughtered underneath the supplied thighs and breasts of their counterparts.

Bakhareva’s texts additionally comply with this consideration to element. She at all times offers particular suggestions, just like the one on the Levinsky market in Tel Aviv: “For the parents: They should look for Café Arma. This is a shop for all kinds of health stuff (parents like that kind of thing).” She introduces sellers and guests by title. In Budapest, the place Bakhareva has lived for eight years, it’s 72-year-old Ágnes, who has been buying within the giant market corridor for 30 years, or seven-year-old Tanya, who loves nothing greater than Lángos. In her outdated homeland of Russia, Bakhareva retells on a regular basis chatter and quotes the merchants’ quick-witted sayings: “The fish is expensive because it was caught with expensive worms!”

It’s a superb reminder that it is at all times value attending to know a rustic’s individuals – even when their authorities is waging a devastating battle.

Maria Bakhareva, Anna Desnitskaya: “Märkte in aller Welt”. Translated from Russian by Thomas Weiler. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2023. 80 pages, illustrations, hardcover, €26. From 8 years