Cooking in the Wrong Century

An irresistibly witty satire about a dinner party where the foodie guests have a grand amount of taste but no social clue at all.

“Clever, amusing and delightfully compact. To be consumed in one sitting, it pairs wonderfully with a glass or four of fizz.” — Daily Mail

For the hostess, food has always been about growing up. From the pancakes your grandmother made, dolloped with jam, to the salty glug of your very first oyster. Now, poised at the brink of midlife, the hostess prepares for a dinner party in her new apartment, desperate for the envy of her cultured friends. With a hunger for the finer things in life, she folds linen napkins into neat triangles, arranges wildflowers for the table and puts on a playlist that projects effortless cool.

But her composure begins to falter when her guests arrive drunk and late, downing bottles of her perfectly cooled wine and trailing water over the floor. Here comes the chain-smoking professor who never says the right thing, the husband glued to his smartphone, the wife who makes a secret pass at your boyfriend.

As small talk and social preening give way to sexual tension and lost inhibitions, the hostess struggles to maintain control over an evening far beyond her wildest imaginings. Outrageously funny and keenly observed, this is the 1st novel by Austrian powerhouse Teresa Präauer to be translated into English, and a delectable feast of social satire for readers of Perfection and The Anthropologists.