Pablo picasso allegedly exchanged his prints for sevruga, Ian Fleming would buy only osetra, Madonna prefers beluga. As the epitome of conspicuous consumption, caviar hardly needs celebrity endorsers: its iconic power exists "precisely because of the exorbitant costs and their irrelevance to any concept of necessity". But the allure of caviar obscures a murkier truth. This is uncovered by Richard Adams Carey, along with some of the mysteries of the sturgeon itself-a creature that moves like a dreadnought and whose roe are traded in the dark undercurrents of the criminal world.
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