A Novel Cuisine

About the Book

A Novel Cuisine is a comic novel set in contemporary Cape Town. Norman Frye, a food critic, consultant and author of a daily blog, lives contentedly amidst black walls and cunningly placed pools of light, a couch atop a fish tank and a pet rat called Trotsky. He arrives home from a school reunion to find his partner, Ivy, having sex with a young man she had picked up in a coffee shop. A tempestuous fifty days follow for Norman, a rebound girl friend, Gabriella, Ivy and his campaigning, overbearing mother. It’s a time of family feuding, plans for a wake, disputed journals, a cookbook and ‘dark food’. There are secrets hidden in old tape recordings, death and Norman coming to terms with much more than infidelity.

About the Author

John Skotnes, the son of an artist father and mother of great literary and culinary panache was born on the 24th October 1952. He was educated in Johannesburg, South Africa and completed a fi ve-year apprenticeship, as a goldsmith, before moving to Cape Town. He has worked as a jeweller, sculptor and teacher. In 1993, the year his daughter was born, he opened the Department of Jewellery Design and Manufacture at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. In 2010 John was awarded his masters degree in creative writing from the University of Cape Town. A Novel Cuisine is his fi rst novel.