The Last Chinese Chef

(Paperback)

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This alluring novel of friendship, love, and cuisine brings the author to one of the great Chinese subjects: food. And the hidden world of Chinese high culinary culture. When Maggie McElroy, a widowed American food writer, learns of a Chinese paternity claim against her late husband's estate, she has to go immediately to Beijing. She asks her magazine for time off, but her editor counters with an assignment: to profile the rising culinary star Sam Liang. In China, Maggie unties the knots of her husband's past, finding out more than she expected about him and about herself. With Sam as her guide, she is also drawn deep into a world of food rooted in centuries of history and philosophy. To her surprise, she begins to be transformed by the cuisine, by Sam's family - a querulous but loving pack of cooks and diners - and most of all by Sam himself. The Last Chinese Chef is the exhilarating story of a woman regaining her soul in the most unexpected of places.

Author Bio

Nicole Mones is the author of the award-winning novels THE LAST CHINESE CHEF, LOST IN TRANSLATION and A CUP OF LIGHT, which are in print in more than twenty languages. 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. Her nonfiction writing on China has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Gourmet and the Washington Post. She is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. She lives in Portland, Oregon. www.nicolemones.com