Why Italians Love to Talk about Food
Kostioukovitch, Elena

RRP
A$34.99

An award-winning and thoroughly delicious cultural romp around Italy!

Why Italians Love to Talk About Food is a fascinating mix of history, culture, language and cuisine. Covering each of Italy's 20 diverse regions, along with chapters on general themes such as olive oil, Slow Food, and the Mediterranean diet, it is a gastronomic-cultural guide. Award-winning writer Elena Kostioukovitch shows how each region's traditional cuisine and local specialties have been informed by its culture and history, its exposure to foreign influences, its geography and landscape, its topography and climate, its social customs and attitudes, its religious canons, its politics and economy, and more. Food is a common language which crosses the most diverse social and economic strata. In the end it is Kostioukovitch's love for Italy itself, even more so than its food, that is her muse and inspiration.

Author Information

Elena Kostioukovitch is an essayist and literary translator and the recipient of numerous prizes, including Best Translation of the Year (1988), Zoil (1999), Grinzane Cavour Moscow (2004) and the Welcome Prize (2005) given by the Russian National Association of Restaurateurs. She has translated a number of Italian works into Russian, and in 1988 her translation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose made her famous overnight; the Russian translation became a literary sensation in its own right and since its first publication has never been out of print. She has gone on to translate other novels of Eco, and is today the translator par excellence of the works of one of Italy's most famous writers into Russian. Elena is married with two children and lives in Milan.