Recipes from Imaginary Places

A Literary Feast to Nourish the Soul… and the Stomach

There is a hunger that can only be quenched by books. A hunger for adventures and extraordinary stories, for timeless characters and fantastical worlds. Good literature awakens the senses; it has a fragrance to savor, leaving a distinctive taste that we enjoy for a lifetime. Alberto Manguel, a discerning reader and a skilled chef, has devoured the finest works of literature and presents us here with a delectable selection of recipes that nourish both the soul and the stomach, forming a culinary atlas of dreamlike worlds: from Atlantic fish soup to Burundian honey biscuits, passing through Count Dracula’s own fresh blood cocktail, or the wizard fingers served at Hogwarts. A literary feast, like any wonderful party, that ends in the kitchen. All recipes are accompanied by their literary source and an illustration by the author.

Alberto Manguel, an Argentinian-Canadian, was born in Buenos Aires in 1948. He has lived in Italy, the United Kingdom, Tahiti, Canada, France, and Argentina. He has enriched the literary world in various forms (essays, novels, literary criticism, plays, anthologies, translation, and editing), earning him international acclaim and numerous awards and honors, including the Formentor Prize,