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For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness. But when the she falls in love with one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, she renounces her business in order to become his wife. But it is not so easy to renounce her independent spirit, and eventually Kazu must choose between her marriage and the demands of her irrepressible vitality. After the Banquet is a magnificent portrait of political and domestic warfare.
"When factory worker Dan Dong accidentally discovers how easy it is to infiltrate state- and corporate-sponsored banquets by posing as a journalist, he quickly becomes addicted to the insane luxury of these meals. For the first time, he tastes crab-claw tips, exotic fungi, and a dish made from thousands of pigeon tongues arranged in the shape of a chrysanthemum. But when Dan's disguise enables him to become privy to a deep-rooted scandal, his conscience compels him to cross the line between subterfuge and reality by actually writing an expose. With the help of the witty, jaded reporter Happy Gao, Dan embarks on a journey that will take him from the highest rungs of society to its most sordid depths." "Throughout the book, food - from the spicy, oily fare Dan orders for a high-class prostitute at a restaurant called Pink Chamber, to the humble noodle dishes prepared by his long-suffering wife, Little Plum - is present on almost every page, described so vividly that you can almost smell and taste it. But by the final page of The Banquet Bug, it has become clear that the perils of consumption run parallel to its pleasures."--BOOK JACKET.
Set against the backdrop of the Enlightenment, the delectable decadence of Versailles, and the French Revolution, The Last Banquet is an intimate epic that tells the story of one man’s quest to know the world through its many and marvelous flavors. Jean-Marie d’Aumout will try anything once, with consequences that are at times mouthwatering and at others fascinatingly macabre (Three Snake Bouillabaisse anyone? Or perhaps some pickled Wolf's Heart?). When he is not obsessively searching for a new taste d’Aumout is a fast friend, a loving husband, a doting father, and an imaginative lover. He befriends Ben Franklin, corresponds with the Marquis de Sade and Voltaire, becomes a favorite at Versailles, thwarts a peasant uprising, improves upon traditional French methods of contraception, plays an instrumental role in the Corsican War of Independence, and constructs France’s finest menagerie. But d’Aumout’s every adventurous turn is decided by his at times dark obsession to know all the world’s flavors before that world changes irreversibly. As gripping as Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, as gloriously ambitious as Daniel Kehlman’s Measuring the World, and as prize-worthy as Andrew Miller’s Pure, The Last Banquet is a hugely appealing novel about food and flavor, about the Age of Reason and the ages of man, and our obsessions and about how, if we manage to survive them, they can bequeath us wisdom and consolation in old age.
According to Chinese tradition, those who die hungry or unjustly come back to haunt the living. Some are appeased with food. But not all ghosts are successfully mollified. In this chilling collection of stories,Ying Chang Compestine takes readers on a journey through time and across different parts of China. From the building of the GreatWall in 200 BCE to themodern day of iPods, hungry ghosts continue to torment those who wronged them. At once a window into the history and culture of China and an ode to Chinese cuisine, this assortment of frightening tales—complete with historical notes and delectable recipes—will both scare and satiate!
This major new poetry collection from bestselling poet and priest Malcolm Guite features more than seventy new and previously unpublished works. At the heart of this collection is a sequence of twenty seven sonnets written in response to George Herbert’s exquisite sonnet 'Prayer', each one describing prayer in an arresting metaphor such as ‘the church's banquet’, ‘reversed thunder’, ‘the Milky Way’, ‘the bird of paradise’ and ‘something understood’. In conversation with each of these, Malcolm’s sonnets offer profound insights into the nature of communion with God in all circumstances and conditions. Recognising that all poetry is a pursuit of prayer, After Prayer also includes forty five more widely ranging new poems, including a sonnet sequence on the seven heavens.
“A witty, scientifically accurate, and often intensely creepy exploration of sanguivorous creatures.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Bill Schutt turns whatever fear and disgust you may feel towards nature’s vampires into a healthy respect for evolution’s power to fill every conceivable niche.”—Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life For centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of scientific knowledge. In Dark Banquet, zoologist Bill Schutt takes us on a fascinating voyage into the world of some of nature’s strangest creatures—the sanguivores. Using a sharp eye and mordant wit, Schutt makes a remarkably persuasive case that blood feeders, from bats to bedbugs, are as deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species are—and that many of them are even worthy of conservation. Examining the substance that sustains nature’s vampires, Schutt reveals just how little we actually knew about blood until well into the twentieth century. We revisit George Washington on his deathbed to learn how ideas about blood and the supposedly therapeutic value of bloodletting, first devised by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, survived into relatively modern times. Dark Banquet details our dangerous and sometimes deadly encounters with ticks, chiggers, and mites (the ­latter implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder—currently devastating honey bees worldwide). Then there are the truly weird—vampire finches. And if you thought piranha were scary, some people believe that the candiru (or willy fish) is the best reason to avoid swimming in the Amazon. Enlightening and alarming, Dark Banquet peers into a part of the natural world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably linked.
With his first three works of fiction—the novels You Bright and Risen Angels and The Ice-Shirt, and the collection The Rainbow Stories—William T. Vollmann announced himself as a writer of rare and ferocious talent, with critics comparing him to William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, and T.C. Boyle. His new novel is the story of Jimmy, who has been deserted by his lover, a prostitute by the name of Gloria. In the despair of his loneliness, and his drunken grief, he reassembles Gloria’s presence out of whatever he can buy from the hookers on the street—the fragments of their lives and dreams, and locks of hair they are willing to share for a price. In his search for these snatches of intimacy he meets the hustlers, drunks, and prostitutes of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district: Candy, who beats her customers when they ask for it but refuses to let them call her a bitch; Snake, who pimps his wife; Nicole, whose job it is to give men AIDS; Jack, who shoots his woman’s earnings into his arm but still likes Chopin even though he doesn’t have a record player; and Gloria, who may or may not be a figment of Jimmy’s imagination. Vollmann writes with explosive power of the inner city, unflinching in the way he confronts the solitude of the homeless and unloved, the insulted and the injured of skid-row America. His exhilarating, high-voltage style and lyric language touch the heart and retrieve a jubilant integrity from the harsh struggles of his characters. Here is a world of harrowing truth, beautifully expressed by a writer of prodigious gifts.
On A Banquet of Consequences: "A moving story full of entertaining characters, experiences, conflicts and triumphs. Offered in a decidedly unpretentious and conversational style, the stories go well beyond the author's association with a famous rock & roll band." William Greenleaf, Greenleaf Literary Services, Inc. On the author's association with Creedence Clearwater Revival: "No one has told the Creedence story as eloquently." Russ Gary, CCR recording engineer, independent TV producer (Los Angeles area) On the business of drugs: ..". [This is] beyond good. I've never read a clearer, more graphic account of the mechanics of the dope trade." Bruce Anderson, Editor/Publisher The Anderson Valley Advertiser On Federal prison: "Colorful characters loom large on the page. Physical settings are vivid and detailed, and are smoothly woven into the memories, musings, and anecdotes." William Greenleaf, Greenleaf Literary Services, Inc. From the author: "My life story (first half), at once confessional, embarrassing, and proud. Irreverent in some places, humorous in others, a little drama here and there."
A Banquet of Consequences is an intricately researched, decisively written and devastating analysis of today’s economy. Satyajit Das connects disparate strands of a story, and in doing so delivers a damning critique of global economic policies of the last 50 years. He argues that governments and citizens of every political hue are now so addicted to growth and resistant to change, that a prolonged period of chronic stagnation, sustained by large infusions of monetary morphine and continuous interventions, or an unavoidable financial, political and social breakdown are the only possible outcomes. The full text downloaded to your computer With eBooks you can: search for key concepts, words and phrases make highlights and notes as you study share your notes with friends eBooks are downloaded to your computer and accessible either offline through the Bookshelf (available as a free download), available online and also via the iPad and Android apps. Upon purchase, you'll gain instant access to this eBook. Time limit The eBooks products do not have an expiry date. You will continue to access your digital ebook products whilst you have your Bookshelf installed.