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Cooking in the Wrong Century

by Pr

A dinner party where taste outpaces tact

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A dinner party where taste outpaces tact

Set in a new apartment on the brink of midlife, the novel centers on a hostess who hopes her carefully staged dinner party will impress her cultured friends. Her attention to food, table settings and atmosphere meets guests who arrive drunk and late, bringing their own social missteps and complications. As polished small talk gives way to sexual tension and loosened inhibitions, the evening tests the hostess’s efforts to keep control. The setup makes room for satire of foodie culture and social performance, while the hostess’s memories of food—from childhood pancakes to a first oyster—connect the party’s displays of taste to her personal history.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in satirical fiction about foodie culture and social manners.
  • Readers who enjoy stories centered on a dinner party and its shifting group dynamics.
  • Readers interested in food as part of memory and personal history.

Themes

Food and memorySocial status and tasteDinner-party mannersSexual tension

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

An irresistibly witty satire about a dinner party where the foodie guests have a grand amount of taste but no social clue at all.

"Clever, amusing and delightfully compact. To be consumed in one sitting, it pairs wonderfully with a glass or four of fizz." -- Daily Mail


For the hostess, food has always been about growing up. From the pancakes your grandmother made, dolloped with jam, to the salty glug of your very first oyster. Now, poised at the brink of midlife, the hostess prepares for a dinner party in her new apartment, desperate for the envy of her cultured friends. With a hunger for the finer things in life, she folds linen napkins into neat triangles, arranges wildflowers for the table and puts on a playlist that projects effortless cool.

But her composure begins to falter when her guests arrive drunk and late, downing bottles of her perfectly cooled wine and trailing water over the floor. Here comes the chain-smoking professor who never says the right thing, the husband glued to his smartphone, the wife who makes a secret pass at your boyfriend.

As small talk and social preening give way to sexual tension and lost inhibitions, the hostess struggles to maintain control over an evening far beyond her wildest imaginings. Outrageously funny and keenly observed, this is the 1st novel by Austrian powerhouse Teresa Pr
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