Kafka’s Soup

Abstract

Probably the most entertaining English cookery book of 2005, which to my chagrin I did not discover until 2006 (via Barbara Santich), was Kafka’s Soup. A complete history of world literature in 14 recipes by the London artist and photographer Mark Crick (Libri Publications, £9.99). Each recipe is written in the voice of a giant of global culture (Jane Austen, Raymond Chandler, Borges, Chaucer, Homer, Woolf, de Sade, etc.); the illustrations, too, are amusing and intelligent parodies. An American edition is out this winter (Harcourt) and a French translation is in the pipeline. Mark Crick has kindly given us permission to print his variations on a theme of Proust.