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  • Published: 15 June 2006
  • ISBN: 9781400077762
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

The Language of Baklava

A Memoir



Diana Abu-Jaber’s vibrant, humorous memoir weaves together delicious food memories that illuminate the two cultures of her childhood—American and Jordanian. Here are stories of being raised by a food-obsessed Jordanian father and tales of Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts and goat stew feasts under Bedouin tents in the desert. These sensuously evoked repasts, complete with recipes, paint a loving and complex portrait of Diana’s impractical, displaced immigrant father who, like many an immigrant before him, cooked to remember the place he came from and to pass that connection on to his children. The Language of Baklava irresistibly invites us to sit down at the table with Diana’s family, sharing unforgettable meals that turn out to be as much about “grace, difference, faith, love” as they are about food.

  • Published: 15 June 2006
  • ISBN: 9781400077762
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

About the author

Diana Abu-Jaber

Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of Crescent, which was awarded the 2004 PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction and the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award, and was named one of the twenty best novels of 2003 by The Christian Science Monitor. She is also the author of Arabian Jazz, which won the 1994 Oregon Book Award and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She teaches at Portland State University and divides her time between Portland and Miami.

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