‘Memoir with recipes’ wins inaugural unpublished manuscript award

Food writer, social historian and journalist Anna Kharzeeva’s “memoir with recipes” has won the inaugural Wingate Award for Unpublished Manuscripts (Jewish Subject).

The prize is part of the 2024 Shalom Australian Jewish Book Awards, created by the not-for-profit to recognise excellence in contemporary Jewish Australian writing.

Kharzeeva’s non-fiction manuscript, Warm Walls: A journey from Moscow to Sydney, to self. A memoir with recipes, reflects on her Russian-Jewish ancestry and decision to leave Moscow in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Each of the 10 chapters incorporates a kitchen object from her four-generation family home, and ends with a recipe suited to the object.

Speaking to The Jewish Independent, Kharzeeva said the award was “a massive vote of confidence” for her manuscript, which is only a third completed.

“I’ve had a couple of rejections from publishers, and I’ve thought no-one is going to be interested, especially because it’s a Jewish story and a Russian story. You just wonder if it’s even possible to publish something like that today, even though I think it’s an important story to share,” she said.

“It means a lot because now I feel like it’s a worthy story. I feel like I can get it across the line.”

Kharzeeva – who was born and raised in Moscow and moved to Sydney in March 2022 – is also the author of The Soviet Diet Cookbook: exploring life, culture and history – one recipe at a time, which similarly dissects history, society and family through the prism of food.