A Thousand Feasts

Small Moments of Joy … a Memoir of Sorts

Nigel Slater author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers

Published:26th Sep '24

Should be back in stock very soon

This hardback is available in another edition too:

A Thousand Feasts cover

a joyful new memoir on the pleasures of food, travel and gardening

THE INSTANT #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

From award-winning writer Nigel Slater, comes a new and exquisitely written collection of notes, memoir, stories and small moments of joy.

'Nigel Slater’s prose is the rarest delicacy of all: exquisite yet effortless, filled with heart, tenderness, yearning and humour' ELIZABETH DAY

For years, Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaked in a fisherman’s hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna Konditorei.

These are the small moments, events and happenings that gave pleasure before they disappeared. Miso soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in plain sight. He gives short stories of feasts such as a mango eaten in monsoon rain or a dish of restorative macaroni cheese and homes in on the scent of freshly picked sweet peas and the sound of water breathing at night in Japan.

This funny and sharply observed collection of the good bits of life, often things that pass many of us by, is utter joy from beginning to end.

‘I loved this. It is a secular book of hours – thoughts and pleasures beautifully cadenced and generously placed’ Edmund de Waal

‘Nigel Slater has a magical capacity to find beauty in the smallest moments. A nourishing, sustaining book’ Olivia Laing

‘His evocative, uplifting observations are a balm for life: a prose-poem for eaters and a spiritual companion for thoughtful cooks. A true and enduring joy’ Nigella Lawson

‘You can’t always feel buoyant and grateful but noticing – and getting pleasure from – the seemingly insignificant is a good way to live. As he says, feel the “small moments of joy”’ Diana Henry

PRAISE FOR A THOUSAND FEASTS:

‘Slater is at his best on food and travel: his ability to evoke a culture and a mood (and his food writing by itself does both) is remarkable … He is a purveyor of the good life, simplicity, cosiness and warmth’Sunday Times

‘Slater’s greatest talent is making the ordinary extraordinary, showing us how to revel in a ripe fig or a piece of cheese … He may worry that he sounds trite and that his musings on diminutive pleasures are trivial, that he hasn’t answered any of the big questions about the universe, but as I leave I feel grateful for Slater, the god of small things’ The Times

‘I loved this. It is a secular book of hours – thoughts and pleasures beautifully cadenced and generously placed’ Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

‘Nigel Slater has a magical capacity to find beauty in the smallest moments. A nourishing, sustaining book’ Olivia Laing, author ofThe Garden Against Time

‘Nigel Slater’s prose is the rarest delicacy of all: exquisite yet effortless, filled with heart, tenderness, yearning and humour. I feel so lucky to exist in a time when Slater is writing about what it is to be alive' Elizabeth Day, author of Friendaholic

‘The granular detail and the passion are obviously signature Slater, but this book feels different: a sort of timeless diary, with its glimpsed, generous offerings to the tired reader, who in days like ours might forget that there’s still so much beauty to be had’ Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

‘Toast brandished food as a weapon. Feasts provides a panacea, allowing the author the boyhood moments he was denied, whether sneaking bites of biscuit batter or fretting in Tokyo under the stern, schoolmistress glare of a “disapproving eel lady” … ephemeral and enriched by pathos’ Irish Times

ISBN: 9780008670740

Dimensions: 204mm x 141mm x 33mm

Weight: 420g

368 pages