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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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ON THE NOODLE ROAD

Jen Lin-Liu

When Jen Lin-Liu married, she and her husband, Craig, promised to put their marriage first. And almost immediately she had an irresistible urge to put that vow to the test. Honeymooning in Italy, she was struck again and again by dishes, ingredients, and techniques that echoed those she’d learned in China, and taught in the cooking school she ran back in Beijing.
Who really invented the noodle, she wondered, like countless food-lovers before her. How had food and people moved along the ancient trade routes that connected Asia to Europe – and what could still be felt of those long-ago migrations?
Lin-Liu set out to retrace them for herself, following a route that wound like a noodle from Beijing through western China and on into Central Asia via Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. After a sojourn in Iran, she headed on to Turkey, and from there across the Mediterranean by boat to Italy. And what of her husband, and her vow?
Jen Lin-Liu is the founder of Black Sesame Kitchen, a Beijing cooking school; she is the author of a previous memoir, Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China.
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Book

Published 2013-07-25 by Riverhead

Book

Published 2013-07-25 by Riverhead

Comments

I was so riveted by Jen Lin-Liu's On the Noodle Road I could hardly put it down. I found it moving, enlightening and funny, offering insight into contemporary life infused with a social history of food. Joyful and thoroughly entertaining.

Whether she’s attending cooking school in Iran or showing us how to find a Turkish pork speakeasy, Jen Lin-Liu is the perfect guide to all the flavors and fascinations of the Silk Road.

Some writers follow the money; Jen Lin-Liu follows the noodle. Whipping up a delicious concoction of a travelogue as she journeys between China and Italy, she proves that food is not only the way to the heart but a way into understanding the psyches of the people doing the cooking and eating.