In The Kitchen

by Monica Ali
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The brilliant new novel from the bestselling author of Brick Lane.

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Synopsis

At the once-splendid Imperial Hotel, chef Gabriel Lightfoot is trying to run a tight kitchen. But his integrity and his sanity are under constant challenge from an exuberantly multinational staff, a gimlet-eyed hotel management, and business partners with whom he is planning a new venture. Despite the pressure, his hard work looks set to pay off.Until the discovery of a porter’s dead body In The Kitchen appears to tip the scales. It is a small death, a lonely death – but it is enough to disturb the tenuous balance of Gabe’s life. In The Kitchen is Monica Ali's stunning follow up to Brick Lane. It is both the portrait of a man pushed to the edge, and a wry and telling look into the melting pot which is our contemporary existance. It confirms Monica Ali not only as a great modern storyteller but also an acute observer of the dramas of modern life.

Editorial Reviews

"A novel of quiet pleasures, with a perplexed hero who always rings true." - Mail on Sunday

"Her descriptions of Gabe's disassociated states are excellent...this is an ambitious book from a writer not content to revisit familiar territory...Serious and intelligent." - Independent

"Ali's strengths lie in a cool authorial distance, and a passion for detail" - The Times

"A compelling story..Ali is second to none when it comes to capturing modes of speech...Monica Ali is shaping up to be a fine novelist" - Sunday Express

"The kitchen of the title is the Imperial Hotel in central London, and Ali's dazzling accounts of its manic goings-on make the chef Anthony Bourdain's gory memoir, Kitchen Confidential, seem as genteel as Fanny Cradock." - Sunday Times

"A bold novel from an intelligent writer who is determined to explore difficult relationships and uncomfortable conditions in 21st-century Britain." - Independent on Sunday

"Ali has chosen a workplace that, though familliar through television shows, remains fascinating, and the kitchen scenes are superb...Ali's prose is often beautiful and there are flashes of Brick Lane's buoyant comedy" - Observer

"Few writers these days can strip characters to their very souls like Ali does" - Entertainment Weekly

"In the Kitchen works best as a novel about work. Ali has done her homework on restaurant kitchens and weaving, and uses both as sustained metaphors for contrasting visions of society: the cohesive social fabric nostalgically remembered by Gabe's father and his peers, and the melting pot of Gabe's kitchen in the contemporary world of deregulated labour." - Guardian

"Ali lulls us into thinking this will be a conventional enough murder mystery. But to the familiar tale of life in the big city spinning out of control, she brings what Orwell called the 'power of facing unpleasant facts' dissecting the body politic with acuity and humour - and confronting unpalatable truths about our selfishness and complicity" - Times Literary Supplement

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