Gourmet - Brossura

'An exquisite French black comedy.'--The Times

'A foodie's delight; just don't read it when you're hungry.'--Daily Mail

'Barbery has a knack for describing food, and for evoking the physical and emotional sensations it produces.'--Financial Times

'The exquisite descriptions of eating are like nothing you've read before'--Good Housekeeping

'An ode to the pleasure of good food ... mouthwatering from beginning to end' --Paris Match

Amazon Best of the Month, September 2009: Proust's infamous madeleine cannot hold a candle to the lush, winsome memories of meals past that you'll find in Muriel Barbery's Gourmet Rhapsody. M. Pierre Arthens is France's premier restaurant critic so premier in fact that he's simply called the Maître and we meet him as he lies in bed, waiting to die. Fervently he mines years of gastronomic delights and discoveries in search of one single flavor, one that he says is 'the only true thing ever accomplished.' What unfolds in vignettes narrated by him and by a chorus of his familiars (most human, some quite comically not) is a portrait of a man in thrall to the very ingredient that makes French cuisine so inescapably, ecstatically, seductive: It's not cream, nor cognac, but the cook who defines those glorious tastes. 'The only true work of art, in the end,' he says,' is another person's feast.' --Amazon.com Review - Anne Bartholomew

In the pages of this book, Barbery shows off her finest gift: lightness. --La Repubblica

Muriel Barbery teaches philosophy. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is her second novel. The Gourmet, her first novel, features some of the characters from Hedgehog.