Literary Feasts

A collection of insightful essays on food accompanied by a host of recipes <I>Literary Feasts</I> explores the significance of food in literature. Each featured meal--from Madame Bovary's wedding feast of chicken fricassee to Doc's beer milkshake from <I>Cannery Row</I> --has been set down in recipe form as authentically as possible so readers may duplicate them at home.</p><p>Drawing on the culinary traditions of the times and cultures at the center of each novel the author serves up an eggplant epiphany from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's <I>Love in the Time of Cholera</I> jam tarts from D.H. Lawrence's <I>Sons and Lovers</I> to Mrs. Ramsay's famous boeuf en daube dinner in Virginia Woolf's <I>To the Lighthouse</I> and much more. Accompanying thought-provoking essays define the role of food in each work: as a part of a larger metaphor in Ralph Ellison's <I>Invisible Man</I>; as a way of depicting character like the bland diet of the dull Mr. Woodhouse in Jane Austen's <I>Emma</I>; as a means of adding vivid detail in Edith Wharton's <I>The House of Mirth</I>.</P><P>Readers can sample the foods featured in:<UL><LI>Leo Tolstoy's <I>Anna Karenina</I><LI>Charlotte Bronte's<I>Jane Eyre</I><LI>Saul Bellow's <I>Herzog</I><LI>Theodore Dreiser's <I>Sister Carrie</I><LI>Earnest Hemingway's <I>A Moveable Feast</I><LI>Kate Chopin's <I>The Awakening</I><LI>and more.</UL></P><P><I>Literary Feasts</I> is sure to please book lovers and gourmets alike.