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Alluring novel of friendship, love, and cuisine brings the best-selling author of Lost in Translation to one of the great Chinese subjects: food. And the hidden world of Chinese high culinary culture.
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Nicole Mones has mined the endless riches of China once again in The Last Chinese Chef. This time she hits the trifecta: the personal stories of Sam and Maggie, the history and lore of Chinese cuisine, and an inside look at cultural dislocation. Maggie McElroy is a widowed American food writer who is suddenly confronted with a paternity claim against her late husband's estate--by a Chinese family. Her editor offers her another reason to go to Beijing: write an article about a rising young Chinese-American-Jewish chef, Sam Liang. Having sold the home she had with her late husband Matt and reduced her possessions to only the barest necessities, with her life feeling as though it is contracting around her, Maggie embraces the oppportunity to sort out her feelings about Matt's supposed infidelity and do some work at the same time.
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She and Sam hit it off right away, even though he is involved in a very important competition for a place on the Chinese national cooking team for the 2008 Olympics. They travel together to the south of China where she meets her husband's possible daughter--with Sam standing by to act as translator--and where Maggie meets much of Sam's family. He has been welcomed back with open arms, even though he occasionally feels that he has one foot in China and one in Ohio. The Beijing uncles and the Hangzhou uncle are a raucous, loving, argumentative bunch of foodies who advise Sam about menus, encourage a romance with Maggie, make him start over again when the dish isn't perfect, and alternately praise and criticize his cooking.
Maggie loves being in the middle of it all and finds herself more and more drawn to Sam. She begins, with Sam's help, to see food as "healing" and understands the guanxi or "connectedness" that takes place around food. At the beginning of each chapter is a paragraph taken from a book entitled The Last Chinese Chef, written by Sam's grandfather and translated by Sam and his father. Mones has written that book, too, which is an explanation of the place of food in Chinese history and family life. The novel is rich with meaning and lore and an examination of loving relationships. Don't even touch this book when you're hungry. The descriptions make the aromas and textures float right off the page. --Valerie Ryan
Nicole Mones is the author of Lost in Translation and A Cup of Light.
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- PublisherMariner Books
- Publication date2007
- ISBN 10 0732287138
- ISBN 13 9780732287139
- BindingPaperback
- Rating
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The Last Chinese Chef
Published by
HarperCollins Publishers Australia
(2007)
ISBN 10: 0732287138
ISBN 13: 9780732287139
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Paperback
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. 453 pages. Cover wornAn alluring novel of food, friendship an d love from the best-selling author of LOST IN TRANSLATION and A CUP OF LIGHT. THE LAST CHINESE CHEF will forever change the way y ou look at Chinese cuisine and culinary culture. You may know Chi nese food; you may even love it. But tHE LASt CHINESE CHEF will t ake you into a world of Chinese food you never even knew existed. Here is the hidden universe of one of the world's great cuisines . Its philosophy, its concepts, and its artistic ambitions are al l illuminated in a story that's entertaining, emotionally satisfy ing, and erudite. When widowed American food writer Maggie McElro y is hit by a paternity claim against her husband's estate, she h as to go to China immediately. She asks her magazine for time off . they counter with an assignment: to profile rising culinary sta r Sam Liang. In China Maggie teases apart the knots of her husban d's past, finding out more than she expected about him and about herself. With Sam as her guide, she also journeys deep into a foo d culture rooted in its own principles and traditions. She is tra nsformed - by the cuisine, by Sam's family, a querulous but lovin g pack of passionate cooks and diners, and most of all by Sam him self. tHE LASt CHINESE CHEF is the exhilarating story of a woman regaining her soul in the most unexpected of places. Seller Inventory # 2709aa
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