The Last Chinese Chef - Rilegato

Finalist for the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction World Gourmand Award Winner

"Stunning... will really make your mouth water."
-Entertainment Weekly

"Entertaining and learned... the perfect leisure read...effortless... profound... delicious."
-Wall Street Journal

"The most thorough explanation of Chinese food I’ve ever read in the English language."
-Ruth Reichl, NPR

"A dazzling journey... a feast... a page turner both exciting and wise."
-David Henry Hwang

"Food and travel writing at its best... engaging, inventive, and incredibly informative."
-Booksense

"It doesn’t seem quite fair for an author to be as skilled...as Nicole Mones. Entrances."
-Seattle Times

"Will transport you... you won’t want to put the book down..."
-NW Asian Weekly

"A masterpiece for Chinese food."
-Edouard Cointreau, judges’ panel, World Gourmand Award

"Subtle...meticulously researched... will entice. Avoid reading while hungry."
-Kirkus Reviews

"Sumptuous... tantalizing. Early in her visit, Maggie scoffs at the idea that food can heal the human heart. Mones smartly proves her wrong."
-Publisher’s Weekly

"Crackling with energy and ambition.. will delight... erudite details and butter-smooth prose."
-Diana Abu-Jaber

"Maybe you never considered the imperial heights of Chinese cuisine. Nicole Mones can change that with the flip of a page."
-Charlotte Observer

"Outstanding and beautifully written."
-Willamette Week

Erudite and entertaining...mouthwatering details on one of the world’s greatest cuisines."
-Northwest Asian Times

"Captivating...evocative... admirably adept...invaluably quirky knowledge about Chinese culture and food. "
-New York Times Book Review

"Delicious... deftly portrays complexity and passion of a cross-cultural love affair... and the rarefied and competitive world of Chinese haute cuisine, a subtle complex art that reached its apogee in the court of the Emperor and was nearly obliterated in Mao’s Cultural Revolution."
Judges’ Citation, Kiriyama Prize

"Delicious...reveals the sophistication of an ancient culture but also its corruption, cronyism, and poverty. "
-Waterstone Review

NICOLE MONES is the author of the New York Times Notable Book Lost in Translation and A Cup of Light. She started a textile business in China at the end of the Cultural Revolution and ran it for eighteen years, and she brings to her fiction writing an in-depth understanding of China and its culture. Mones is a frequent contributor to Gourmet magazine, which ran an excerpt of The Last Chinese Chef—marking the first time Gourmet has ever published fiction in its pages. She lives in Portland, Oregon.