Gastronomic Novel: The Literature of the Senses.
What is it about food that, entangled in a good story, hooks so many readers? Gastronomic novel with chefs as protagonists, biographical or fictional, stories with the kitchen as the main stage, adventure where gastronomy plays a leading role, and even literary works that they include on their pages the recipes of the dishes that appear in them.
It is not fair to cite a few as it is not possible to cite them all, nor would it be fair to leave them in oblivion just because there are so many masterpieces in this genre that they cannot all fit in a single article.
Of those novels with recipes ...
The first novel I found myself in, unexpectedly, a lot of recipes was Man does not live on caviar alone hand in hand with one of the greats of German literature, Johannes M Simmel (Vienna, 1924-2009). A novel Of spies! In which a London banker, let's call him Thomas Lieven, betrayed by his compatriots in the middle of the Second World War, becomes an independent spy and conquers all sides and the most diverse characters with their English elegance and good arts in the kitchen.
«Citizen Thomas Lieven was forced to fight in the course of actions as impressive as they were grotesque against the following organizations: the German Abwehr and the Gestapo, the British Secret Service, the French Deuxième Bureau, the American Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Soviet State Security Service. "
The author included in each chapter the recipes of the dishes that appear in it. Dishes of the world, summed up masterfully enough to make cAny foodie can show off an unforeseen treat, with which he would never have dared if he had not been his reader.
Lives between pots, who does not remember Like Water for Chocolate?
Laura Esquivel (Mexico, 1950) wrote in 1989 this masterpiece of magical realism, which is considered one of the most relevant novels of the XNUMXth century. Translated into more than thirty languages. In the middle of the Mexican revolution, the love story between a cook, Tita and Pedro, in love since they were almost children, who becomes the husband of his sister, Rosaura, due to the impediments of his mother to marry Tita. Pedro and Rosaura have a child, whom Tita raises as her own, due to Rosaura's illness. The child dies and Tita's only refuge is the kitchen. In a story of passions, sadness and oppression told like a fairy tale, where fairies suffer and cry. There are no recipes in Como Agua para el Chocolate, but when the reader closes it on the last page, they have the feeling of having spent their last years in Tita's kitchen, wanting to spend the next years cooking quail in rose petal sauce. .
The kitchen: confidences and emotions where no one can hear them.
Chef lives.
From magical realism to almost eschatological realism, wild, comic and sometimes cruel de The chef, the work of simon wroe (Camberwell, 1982)
"Actually, my thing is the writer, but since the success and the fame, which I undoubtedly deserve, seemed to be delayed, I had to face the most immediate problem, that is, paying the rent"
In his first novel, the writer-chef, tells us about his own life in the kitchens of a slum, El Swam, with a crazy boss and torturer and some colleagues who are into the saga or do not survive more than a few days in the team, her relationships with a toxic father she can't get rid of, not in her head, not in her seedy room. After reading this book, it is hard to go back to a restaurant without thinking about what macabre scenes are happening behind the kitchen door.
Gastronomy as the backdrop for the detective novel.
A spanish cook, Xavier Gutierrez (San Sebastián 1960), from the Arzak Restaurant, explores a new genre, Gastronomic noir, in one where the victims are related to gastronomy or the world of wine. Winemakers, food critics or The name of the novel series says it all: The Scent of Crime. Its protagonist, an officer of the Ertzaintza, named Vicente Parra. An impossible combination to forget.
The gastronomic novel, that combination of arts that comforts our minds while stimulating our appetite.