The Writer's Feast

Sharing food, eating salt, breaking bread, raising a toast, picnics in the wild, formal dinners, all have certain ideological, political and social significances some foods are taboo, whereas others endow the eater with purity the means of preparing or processing food in different cultures each symbolise something the writer’s feast is a collection of essays that discuss the various symbolic representations associated with food the essays in this volume show how food is a system of signs through which human societies give meanings to the material world they inhabit the book is divided into four thematic sections the first section eating cultures looks at social practices and systems relating to food and its consumption the second section gendering food, focuses on the gender implications of cooking and serving food in the third section, migrancy, diaspora and the cosmopolitan gourmet, the overwhelming importance of the symbolic function of food is discussed in immigrant narratives, a

Supriya Chaudhuri is Professor and Co-ordinator of the Centre of Advanced Study in the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Rimi B. Chatterjee teaches English at Jadavpur University, India. Her academic book Empires of the Mind (OUP India, 2006), won the SHARP de Long Book Prize for that year.