I am pleased this year to be able to say that not only do I know of the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, but I have even read her. This in sharp contrast to my disgrace of last year, but the less said about that the better. Herta Müller, I can now say with some authority, is a worthy winner.
This being the world, earth, and inhabited by humans, bookmakers took bets on who would win the $1.42m prize. Most punters lost their money, although if any had put money on Müller they would have cleaned up at 50 to 1 odds.
The favourite for this year was Amos Oz, with Algerian novelist Assia Djebar running a close second.
According to Ladbrokes, Oz was odds-on favourite at 4 to 1. Phillip Roth was ranked at 7 to 1, with Haruki Murakami at 9 to 1, who would have been my choice. If he does not win it this year, he should do so soon, along with Tim Winton, who has sadly been overlooked twice for the Booker Award but will still get that if there is any justice in the world. Paul Auster was a rank outsider at 100 to 1 odds.
The Booker Man prize went to Hilary Mantel. This did not surprise the bookies at all as she was the odds-on favourite.
My partner suggested that we contrast the Nobel Awards with the slightly less exalted Ig Nobel Awards, announced in early October. This award states its ambition as being: "first make people laugh, then think". The winner in the category of literature this year was the Irish national police force for issuing 50 tickets to one "Prawo Jazdy", which in Polish means "driver's license." Of further interest was the Ig Nobel award for Mathematics given to Zimbabwean, Gideon Gono and the Zimbabwean Reserve Bank for printing bank notes in denominations from 1 cent, to $100 trillion, ($100,000,000,000,000), thus "...giving people an everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers — from very small to very big".
This month we are featuring 2 unused books and one collectable book.
The Alexandria Link - by Steve Berry
A hidden treasure. A forgotten truth. Cotton Malone is in trouble. His son has been kidnapped and his bookshop in Copenhagen attacked, all because he is the only man alive who knows the whereabouts of the Alexandria link -- the means of locating the most important cache of ancient knowledge ever assembled: the legendary Library of Alexandria, which vanished without trace fifteen hundred years ago. Now, Malone is forced to join the search for a forgotten truth hidden within that vast literary treasure -- a truth that, if revealed, will have grave consequences, not only for Malone, but for the balance of world power ... 534 pages, December 2007 Published by Hodder & Stoughton
Published Price : R114.00.Tall Stories Price : R50.00
Delizia! The epic history of the Italians and their food by John Dickie
The answer lies amid the vibrant beauty of Italy's historic cities. For a thousand years, they have been magnets for everything that makes for great eating: ingredients, talent, money, and power. Italian food is "city" food.
From the bustle of medieval Milan's marketplace to the banqueting halls of Renaissance Ferrara; from street stalls in the putrid alleyways of nineteenth-century Naples to the noisy trattorie of postwar Rome: in rich slices of urban life, historian and master storyteller John Dickie shows how taste, creativity, and civic pride blended with princely arrogance, political violence, and dark intrigue to create the world's favorite cuisine. "Delizia!" is much more than a history of Italian food. It is a history of Italy told through the flavors and character of its cities.
A dynamic chronicle that is full of surprises, "Delizia!" draws back the curtain on much that was unknown about Italian food and exposes the long-held canards. It interprets the ancient Arabic map that tells of pasta's true origins, and shows that Marco Polo did not introduce spaghetti to the Italians, as is often thought, but did have a big influence on making pasta a part of the American diet. It seeks out the medieval recipes that reveal Italy's long love affair with exotic spices, and introduces the great Renaissance cookery writer who plotted to murder the Pope even as he detailed the aphrodisiac qualities of his ingredients. It moves from the opulent theater of a Renaissance wedding banquet, with its gargantuan ten-course menu comprising hundreds of separate dishes, to the thin soups and bland polentas that would eventually force millions to emigrate to the New World. It shows how early pizzas were disgusting and why Mussolini championed risotto. Most important, it explains the origins and growth of the world's greatest urban food culture.
With its delectable mix of vivid storytelling, groundbreaking research, and shrewd analysis, "Delizia!" is as appetizing as the dishes it describes. This passionate account of Italy's civilization of the table will satisfy foodies, history buffs, Italophiles, travelers, students -- and anyone who loves a well-told tale.
Published Price : R144.00. Tall Stories Price : R75.00
First Edition xxvi, 202pp. William Mackenzie : London (1879). First Edition. Very Good / No Dust-Jackets. Folio. Illustrated with 41 full page, tissue-guarded colour plates as well as vignette head pieces, brick-red cloth, with gilt piscatorial emblems. All edges gilt. The 41 colour-printed xylograph plates are by Benjamin Fawcett of Driffield after A.F.Lydon, and another 64 woodcuts also by Lydon. Tear in the cloth of volume 1 (30 mm). Cloth on the spine-ends frayed. Loss of cloth on all corners. No inscriptions, all plates present and bright. Hinge giving (page 20), volume 1. Front paste-downs of both volumes - tears in the gutter. Overall a lovely set, with exceptional plates.
Alexander Francis Lydon (1836 - 1917) was an English engraver of natural history. He worked for Benjamin Fawcett the printer, to whom he had been apprenticed from an early age. Benjamin Fawcett (December 1808 - January 1893) was one of the finest of English nineteenth century wood block colour printers. He pioneered a system of engraving from multiple wood blocks that resulted in vivid, finely coloured works such as this marvelous book. This process was called chromoxylography (colour wood engraving). Rev. W. Houghton, served as rector of Preston-on-the-Weald Moors, Shropshire. At the same time, he was a serious naturalist who had previously authored Sea-side Walks of a Naturalist, and was a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London, a scientific society for the study of biology founded in 1788. For this work, Houghton studied the specimens in the collection of the British Museum.
Price : R9000.00
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