The Debt To Pleasure

Tarquin Winot, voluptuary and supercivilized ironist (and snob), sets out on a journey of the senses from the Hotel Splendide, Portsmouth, to his cottage in Provence, his spiritual home. With his head newly shaved and his well-thumbed copy of the Mossad Manual of Surveillance Techniques safely stowed, Tarquin elegantly introduces his life, itself a work of art, through the medium of seasonal menus.

Winner of Whitbread First Novel Award 1997 (UK) Winner of Betty Trask Award 1996 (UK)

“"The chilling, deluded Tarquin is the best character to come out of an English novel since Charles Dickens put pen to paper." -- Tatler "Reading between the lines to discover what Tarquin is up to is enormous, sinister fun...dazzling, languidly brilliant, his verbal flouishes are irresistible." --James Walton, Daily Telegraph "A fully achieved work of art...a triumph. You have to salute the real thing. The Debt to Pleasure is a major work, a supreme literary construct that's also deliriously entertaining. Even the recipes are gorgeously seductive; several pages of my coy are flecked with stains of regu and ratatouille to mark the moments when I could stand temptation no more." --John Walsh, Independent "Coruscatingly, horribly funny...a cunning commentary on art, appetitie, jealousy and failure. Tarquin is a splendid creation, genuinely learned (the scholarship is dazzling), poisonously bigoted and wholly mad" --John Banville, Observer”

The chilling, deluded Tarquin is the best character to come out of an English novel since Charles Dickens put pen to paper Tatler
Reading between the lines to discover what Tarquin is up to is enormous, sinister fun . . .dazzling, languidly brilliant, his verbal flourishes are irresistible -- James Walton Daily Telegraph
A fully achieved work of art . . .a triumph. You have to salute the real thing. The Debt to Pleasure is a major work, a supreme literary construct that's also deliriously entertaining. Even the recipes are gorgeously seductive; several pages of my copy are flecked with stains of ragu and ratatouille to mark the moments when I could stand temptation no more -- John Walsh Independent
Coruscatingly, horribly funny . . . a cunning commentary on art, appetite, jealousy and failure. Tarquin is a splendid creation, genuinely learned (the scholarship is dazzling), poisonously bigoted and wholly mad -- John Banville Observer
Entertaining, crafty and insouciantly macabre . . . a glittering performance that . . . provides the pleasure that comes from good writing. The Debt to Pleasure is Nabokovian in its wrynessand delight with words New York Times

John Lanchester was born in Hamburg in 1962. He has written four novels, The Debt to Pleasure (which won the Whitbread First Novel Award), Mr Phillips, Fragrant Harbour, and Capital, and two works of non-fiction: Family Romance, a memoir; and Whoops!: Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay, a book about the global financial crisis. He is married, has two children and lives in London.

To like something is to want to ingest it and, in that sense, is to submit to the world; to like something is to succumb, in a small but contentful way, to death. Tarquin Winot - hedonist, food obsessive, ironist and snob - travels a circuitous route from the Hotel Splendide in Portsmouth to his cottage in Provence. Along the way he tells the story of his childhood and beyond through a series of delectable menus, organized by season. But this is no ordinary cookbook, and as we are drawn into Tarquin's world, a far more sinister mission slowly reveals itself . . . Winner of the 1996 Whitbread First Novel Award, The Debt to Pleasure is a wickedly funny ode to food; an erotic and sensual culinary journey. Its elegant, intelligent and unhinged narrator is nothing less than a work of art himself.'Enormous, sinister fun . . . dazzling, languidly brilliant' Daily Telegraph 'A triumph . . . The Debt to Pleasure is a major work, a supreme literary construct that's also deliriously entertaining' Independent

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