Thibault and Malcolm / A Feast for Galileo by Malcolm Hudson.

Paperback.  338 pages.
Genres:  literary fiction, travel literature.

Malcolm Hudson has been a professional chef for 30 years. However, Thibault and Malcolm/A Feast for Galileo is not a cookbook, but a full-bodied, full-blooded novel about eating. It is a work of historical fiction centered on the themes of cooking and eating and has a well-developed, liberal, worldview that passionately celebrates the earth and its bounty. It glorifies the beauty in simplicity. Written in the first person, the novel features two characters in mid-life, without the crisis. An odd couple, Thibault and Malcolm take a picaresque ride into the past (often with comic results), and cook intimate, great meals without pomp or fanfare for famous people who never got an even break, such Nietzsche, Liebniz, Spinoza, Erasmus, Sand, Dostoyevsky, and Galileo to name a few. Thibault and Malcolm/A Feast for Galileo celebrates the beauty, the generosity and the love that makes the craft of cooking the greatest and most honorable profession on earth.