World Noir
The Last Banquet
Jonathan Grimwood
2013, pp. 320, Hardcover
Region: Britain
Where to buy Where to buy Where to buy
StoreDB
Books INC
BN.com
Powell's City of Books
Tattered Cover
Goodreads - Reader Reviews
Reading group guide Reading group guide Reading group guide
JEAN-MARIE D'AUMOUT will try anything once, with consequences that are at times mouthwatering and at others fascinatingly macabre. Orphaned as a child, taken under the wing of a local nobleman and sent to an elite school for young gentlemen, Jean-Marie becomes an Enlightenment-era Zelig. He befriends Ben Franklin, corresponds with the Marquis de Sade and Voltaire, thwarts a peasant uprising, plays a key role in the Corsican War of Independence, and, among other feats, constructs the finest menagerie in all of Europe. Rising through the ranks of eighteenth-century French society, he feasts with lords, ladies, revolutionaries, and eventually kings. He is a father, a husband, a devoted friend, and an imaginative lover. But Jean-Marie's every adventurous turn is decided by his obsessive quest to know all of the world's flavors before that world changes forever. Set against the backdrop of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the delectable decadence of Versailles, The Last Banquet is as gripping as Patrick Suskind's Perfume and as voluptuous as John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure. Jonathan Grimwood has given readers a sumptuous and hugely appealing novel about food and flavor, about the Age of Reason, about revolution, hunger, and obsession.
Jonathan Grimwood has written for The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph and The Independent and numerous other magazines and newspapers. The Last Banquet is his first work of literary fiction. He divides his time between London and Winchester.
NewPages Book Reviews: "Grimwood's prose is elegant, verging on the Dickensian, and his storytelling ability is compelling."
The New Yorker: "The story of his life is far richer than its gastronomic eccentricities: he is a fully realized protagonist, at once sober, self-reliant, and inventive."
NPR: Selects the Last Banquet as One of the Best Books of 2013
Mary Whipple Reviews: " The author's creativity and his immense gifts for description are astonishing on all levels, and the novel itself, while sometimes bizarre, gives new life and a new kind of reality to some tired genres."
All press All press All press
2014, pp. 336, $ 16.00
The Missing of Clairdelune
Book Two of The Mirror Visitor Quartet
D.A. Mishani
The Lying Life of Adults
2020, pp. , $ 26.00
Lorenza Pieri
The Garden of Monsters
Full list >
From the same country
Meena Kandasamy
When I Hit You
"Meena Kandasamy's vivid, sharp and precise writing makes a triumph of When I Hit You."—Guardian
Our Fathers
Brave and urgent, Our Fathers shows how deeply family can wound and how it can offer our greatest solace.
Now We Shall Be Entirely Free
When Captain John Lacroix returns home from Spain, wounded, unconscious, and alone, he believes that he has seen the worst of what men may do. It...
Cooking with Fernet Branca
A witty satire of the expat experience in rural Europe and antidote to every "wish-you-were-here" travel memoir, this novel is entertainment in...
Laura Barnett
The beloved singer-songwriter Cass Wheeler has abandoned retirement for one last chapter in her musical career.
All the Good Things
A 2018 Betty Trask Award Winner. Beth has done something awful. Something that has led to her arrest. Something that has convinced her she is a fundamentally...
Find us in Italy and The UK
© Europa Editions 214 West 29th Street Suite 1003 New York, N.Y. 10001 | info@europaeditions.com | privacy | cookie | credits
Join Our Newsletter and receive a FREE eBook!
Stay updated on Europa's forthcoming releases, author tours and major news.
Are you a bookseller? Click here!