"I do not know of any one in the United States who writes better prose." -W. H. Auden
A practical, culinary, and philosophical guide on how to eke out joy and delight in difficult times.
There is perhaps no other book that speaks so powerfully to hunger and its pangs and to the ingenuity of those who seek to cook their way out of its snapping jaws. Originally written in the depths of World War II and then revised in the shadow of the Cold War, How to Cook a Wolf is at turns both haunting and ennobling-a study in finding joy and delectation in a world being deprived of both. Rather than succumb to the predations of the wolf-and the wolf is hunger, and the wolf is adversity and scarcity-M.F.K. Fisher enjoins her readers to raise a bulwark against precarity and to find deliciousness in unaccustomed places. And even when the table can only be sparely supplied, there will at least be the feast of writing, memories, and wisdom that this classic on hunger and feasting provides. M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992) is the author of sixteen books of essays and reminiscences, many of which have become American classics. Her books include The Gastronomical Me and How to Cook a Wolf. In 1991, she was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. "I do not know of any one in the United States who writes better prose."
-W. H. Auden
"Poet of the appetites."
-John Updike
"She writes about fleeting tastes and feasts vividly, excitingly, sensuously, exquisitely. There is almost a wicked thrill in following her uninhibited track through the glories of the good life."
-James Beard
"She writes about food as others do about love, but rather better."
-Clifton Fadiman
"M.F.K. Fisher . . . brings onstage a peach or a brace of quail and shows us history, cities, fantasies, memories, emotions."
-Patricia Storace, The New York Review of Books
"M.F.K. Fisher is our greatest food writer because she puts food in the mount, the mind and the imagination all at the same time. Beyond the gastronomical bravura, she is a passionate woman; food is her metaphor."
