Cooking with Fernet Branca

"A playful book, full of fun and games. There is so much pleasure to be had from Hamilton-Paterson's delight in language and wicked way with unreliable narrators. . . . The book's effect is achieved almost entirely through the comic magnetism of a single character."-The Times Literary Supplement

"A skillful, highly original writer. . . . The elegant language, witty asides and vivid observations are memorable."-The Literary Review

"I'm bowled over by the sheer imaginative brilliance of the man."-Barry Humphries

"I love his elegant and intensely evocative style: strangeness lifts off his pages like a rare perfume."-J.G. Ballard

"A work of comic genius."-The Independent

"A wonderfully rich alloy of sub-Wildean witticisms and nonsense, Cooking with Fernet Branca had me laughing out loud and uproariously."-Ian Thomson, Sunday Telegraph

Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany, where he wiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions-including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur of the book's title. Gerald's idyll is shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run from a crime-riddled former soviet republic. A series of hilarious misunderstandings brings this odd couple into ever closer and more disastrous proximity.

James Hamilton-Paterson's first novel, Gerontius, won the Whitbread Award. He is an acclaimed author of nonfiction books, including Seven-Tenths, Three Miles Down, and Playing with Water. He currently lives in Italy.