A soul-satisfying escapade

This is the kind of book that will evoke the feeling of fernweh in you — homesick for a place you have never been to.

Eva Ibbotson’s The Star of Kazan should come with a warning on the cover: ‘Caution: May cause extreme cravings for Viennese pastries’. There are several places in the story where
the descriptions of apple strudels or eclairs being made will stop you in your tracks and send you rummaging in your kitchen.

Ibbotson, who died in 2010, aged 85, was primarily known for her children’s literature — The Star of Kazan is one of several novels she wrote for younger audiences. When it came out in 1999, the book won the Nestle Silver Award and was shortlisted for the Carnegie medal.

What sets Ibbotson’s books apart (besides the mouthwatering food described) are the humour, the gorgeous descriptions of cities at the height of their power and nature. The Star of Kazan is set in Austria where Ibbotson was born in 1925 to a Jewish family. Literary talent ran in her genes — her mother was a successful playwright and novelist. In 1934, she and her mother moved to England to escape the growing threat of the Nazi regime. The Star of Kazan is set in Vienna in the early 20th century during the Austro-Hungarian empire.

The book begins with two househelps — Ellie the cook and Sigrid the housemaid — on a picnic up in the mountains on their day off. There, in a small country church, they find an
abandoned baby girl. Ellie and Sigrid search for the parents in the nearby village, but are unsuccessful. Finding that no one is willing to take in the child — not even the convent where there’s a typhus outbreak — Ellie and Sigrid take her back with them to Vienna where they work for a family of professors. The professors — two brothers and a sister — are unmarried and devoted to the life of the mind and wouldn’t countenance having a baby around the house. Ellie and Sigrid hide her with them below stairs.

They are eventually found out. But, the professors take it in their stride and the baby, who is named Annika, grows up to work as a maid with an enviable culinary talent. However, a surprise visitor turns up at the door one day, claiming to be her mother. Annika’s always longed for her birth mother to come for her, so she’s more than ready to believe that this beautiful aristocrat must be the one.

Of course, danger lurks and Annika’s life takes an exciting turn. There are escapades planned (including one that could have inspired Carlos Ghosn’s flight from Japan last year) and jewels to be hunted down. The story is as satisfying as a Sacher torte.

Ibbotson’s prose evokes longing for a place and time the reader perhaps would not have seen or experienced.

“Annika used to love October almost best of all the months; the smell of chestnuts roasting everywhere on street corners, the school outing to the Vienna Woods to collect mushrooms and berries, the drift of blue smoke from garden fires…” Now who wouldn’t want to be lost in Ibbotson’s world?

The author is a Bangalore-based writer and communications professional with many published short stories and essays to her credit.

That One Book is a fortnightly column that does exactly what it says — takes up one great classic and tells you why it is (still) great. Come, raid the bookshelves with us.