Daunt Books

An unnamed narrator sits in a cafe overlooking a train station, sipping a green juice and people-watching. A small white butterfly flutters through the air; a calico cat jumps onto a wall; cherry blossom petals fall, softly, to the ground. Life stands still for one moment. He is preparing to visit his terminally ill wife in hospital. So begins this moving novel exploring the distance between people, places and memories in simple and elegant prose, as Yamazaki raises questions around what family means, how we think about death, and how we express love; particularly in a society where work is often prioritised.

Art student Isogai first models for one of his tutors, the much older Yuri, then begins a passionate affair with her. As he gets to know her better, he struggles to understand his own emotions and his place in the world, just as he yearns to be closer to her and for her to share more of herself with him.

An evocative meditation on longing and buried resentment, set in the beautiful Croatian city of Zadar. Ivona has returned to her childhood home to care for her father. While there, she reconnects with the man she divorced over ten years ago and finds herself welcomed into his family life by him and his wife. But when a new man enters Ivona’s life, the trio’s carefully curated dynamic is disrupted, forcing a reckoning for all involved. Slanting Towards the Sea explores what it means to come of age in a country younger than oneself, as it sets a sensual, decades-long love story against an emerging Croatia.

An enduring gem, Joe Brainard’s I Remember is a literary and artistic cult classic. Brainard’s method was brilliantly simple: to set down specific memories as they rose to the surface of his consciousness, each beginning with the refrain ‘I remember’: ‘I remember that little jerk you give just before you fall asleep. Like falling.’ Recollections – jokes, confessions, daydreams and memories – were carefully, lovingly woven together. They were of family and friends; of movie stars; of early heterosexual fumblings and later gay life. Brainard's pared-back prose dodged both self-pity and judgement of others, and was written with an ear for musical cadence and an extraordinary painter’s eye. The result is witty, incantatory, profound and wholly captivating.

‘A delightful collection of original, vibrant and heart-warming writing.’ – Nigel Slater ‘I learned that before entering the kitchen, I must get the measure of its hold over me.’ Food can embody our personal history as well as wider cultural histories. But what are the stories we tell ourselves about the kitchen, and how do we first come to it? How do the cookbooks we read shape us? Can cooking be a tool for connection in the kitchen and outside of it? In these essays thirteen writers consider the subjects of cooking and eating and how they shape our lives, and the possibilities and limitations the kitchen poses. Rachel Roddy traces an alternative personal history through the cookers in her life; Rebecca May Johnson considers the radical potential of finger food; Ruby Tandoh discovers other definitions of sweetness through the work of writer Doreen Fernandez; Yemisí Aríbisála remembers a love affair in which food failed as a language; and Julia Turshen considers food’s ties to community. A collection to savour and inspire, In the Kitchen brings together thirteen contemporary writers whose work brilliantly explores food, capturing their reflections on their experiences in the kitchen and beyond.