"Of all my culinary heroes, Patience Gray was the most magical...Adam Federman's beautifully considered and well-researched biography shines a bright light on Gray's complicated, surprising, and gutsy life."―Alice Waters, owner, Chez Panisse; author of The Art of Simple Food
A New York Times Notable Book for 2017-Now in Paperback
For more than thirty years, Patience Gray-author of the celebrated cookbook Honey from a Weed-lived in a remote area of Puglia in southernmost Italy. She lived without electricity, modern plumbing, or a telephone, grew much of her own food, and gathered and ate wild plants alongside her neighbors in this economically impoverished region. She was fond of saying that she wrote only for herself and her friends, yet her growing reputation brought a steady stream of international visitors to her door. This simple and isolated life she chose for herself may help explain her relative obscurity when compared to the other great food writers of her time: M. F. K. Fisher, Elizabeth David, and Julia Child.
So it is not surprising that when Gray died in 2005, the BBC described her as an "almost forgotten culinary star." Yet her influence, particularly among chefs and other food writers, has had a lasting and profound effect on the way we view and celebrate good food and regional cuisines. Gray's prescience was unrivaled: She wrote about what today we would call the Slow Food movement-from foraging to eating locally-long before it became part of the cultural mainstream. Imagine if Michael Pollan or Barbara Kingsolver had spent several decades living among Italian, Greek, and Catalan peasants, recording their recipes and the significance of food and food gathering to their way of life.
In Fasting and Feasting, biographer Adam Federman tells the remarkable-and until now untold-life story of Patience Gray: from her privileged and intellectual upbringing in England, to her trials as a single mother during World War II, to her career working as a designer, editor, translator, and author, and describing her travels and culinary adventures in later years. A fascinating and spirited woman, Patience Gray was very much a part of her times but very clearly ahead of them. "[An] absorbing biography . . . Struck by her mind, her vision and her prose, [Federman] went in search of [Gray's] past. The massive research he undertook is evident, but he handles it gracefully; and this richly textured material unfolds at a gentle pace. . . He's done the most important thing a biographer can do: He's created a fully formed character in these pages, honoring not only her brilliance but the rough edges that made her human."-The New York Times Book Review
"Of all my culinary heroes, Patience Gray was the most magical―and the most remote. I was lucky enough to meet her―just once. Adam Federman's beautifully considered and well-researched biography shines a bright light on Gray's complicated, surprising, and gutsy life."―Alice Waters, owner, Chez Panisse; author of The Art of Simple Food
'I felt I almost met Patience Gray amongst the pages of Honey from a Weed and was consumed by a desire to gain her acquaintance. I never did but somehow fancy I came to know her in Fasting and Feasting and love her all the better for it."―Jacob Kenedy, chef-owner, Bocca di Lupo
'A revelatory book about an extraordinary woman, writer, and cook. Patience Gray's rackety life seems to conform perfectly with her visionary and revolutionary views about food, cooking, and eating. She should become a totemic culinary figure for our times.'―William Boyd, author of Sweet Caress and Any Human Heart
'Honey from a Weed has been a constant companion for many years. It is a brilliant work, ahead of its time in so many ways. To now read the story of this fine book's author and her remarkable life is a great joy.'―Jeremy Lee, chef patron, Quo Vadis
"Adam Federman's Fasting and Fe
