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Article: Die Zunge. (Fiction).(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- World Literature Today
- Article date:
- June 22, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 University of Oklahoma. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Lea Singer. Die Zunge Stuttgart. Klett-Cotta. 2000. 318 pages DM 39.80. ISBN 3-608-93520-7
SET DURING THE French Revolution and featuring a wide array of historical figures from Voltaire to the Marquis de Sade, Lea Singer's first novel is ambitious, grandiose, and at times painfully intense. Die Zunge (The Tongue) is a fictionalized biography of the famed gourmand Alexandre Grimod de la Reyniere, considered to be the founder of modern food journalism and author of widely quoted aphorisms on cuisine.
Historically accurate in all details, the book opens with Alexandre's birth to wealthy and neurotic parents, whose house on the Champs Elysees later ...