This extraordinary book by John Lanchester begins with a purported Preface by its purported author, who goes by the suspiciously apt name of Tarquin Winot, and which (the reader learns at a much later stage of the book) has been adopted by the ‘author’ as more appropriate than his given names. And even the site from which he is writing, Hotel Splendide, Portsmouth, is suspiciously unreal, and a figment of the ‘author’s’ imagination.

And so, the unsuspecting reader who has taken the Preface at face value, thinks he or she is embarking on an erudite collection of menus and recipes, arranged according to the seasons of the year and........

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