The Hundred-Foot Journey: A Novel by Richard C. Morais
Richard C. Morais . Unknown Year . English
“Slumdog Millionaire meets Ratatouille” (The New York Times Book Review) in this “delicious fairytale-like read” (NPR) about family, nationality, and the mysteries of good taste. Born above his grandfather’s modest restaurant in Mumbai, Hassan Haji first experienced life through intoxicating whiffs of spicy fish curry, trips to the local markets, and gourmet outings with his mother. But when tragedy pushes the family out of India, they console themselves by eating their way around the world, eventually settling in Lumière, a small village in the French Alps. The boisterous Haji family takes Lumière by storm. They open an inexpensive Indian restaurant opposite an esteemed French relais—that of the famous chef Madame Mallory—and infuse the sleepy town with the spices of India, transforming the lives of its eccentric villagers and infuriating their celebrated neighbor. Only after Madame Mallory wages culinary war with the immigrant family, does she finally agree to mentor young Hassan, leading him to Paris, the launch of his own restaurant, and a slew of new adventures. The Hundred-Foot Journey is about how the hundred-foot distance between a new Indian kitchen and a traditional French one can represent the gulf between different cultures and desires. A testament to the inevitability of destiny, this is a fable for the ages—charming, endearing, and compulsively readable.
Categories: Literature & Fiction
About the Author
Richard C. Morais is an award-winning American novelist and journalist. Mr. Morais is the author of the New York Times and international bestseller The Hundred-Foot Journey, a novel that follows the life of an Indian chef as he conquers the rarified world of French haute cuisine. The novel sold in 35 territories across the globe. In 2014, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Juliet Blake released The Hundred-Foot Journey as a much-loved film directed by Lasse Halström and starring Dame Helen Mirren and Om Puri. His third novel, The Man With No Borders, is the story of a Spanish private banker living in Switzerland with is American wife and coming to terms with his life. Little A, the literary imprint of Amazon Publishing, will be releasing The Man With No Borders on September 1, 2019. Mr. Morais’s sophomore novel, Buddhaland Brooklyn, is about a Japanese Buddhist priest building a temple in Brooklyn. It, too, sold globally and is currently in development as a premium TV series. Mr. Morais is also the author of the critically acclaimed business biography Pierre Cardin: The Man Who Became a Label. Mr. Morais was both the editor of Barron’s Penta, an acclaimed glossy magazine for wealthy families; and Forbes’s European Bureau Chief, the magazine’s longest-serving foreign correspondent, stationed in London for 18 years. His unique brief at Forbes allowed him to travel anywhere in the world and to write on any subject that interested him. His unusual business stories – from a controversial interview with Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street, to his profile of the low-key Indian billionaire Adi Godrej – have led to multiple journalism awards. Mr. Morais has uniquely won three awards and six nominations at the Business Journalist of The Year Awards, the only competition in the world where the best U.S. and British business journalists competed directly in a single event. His literary works, meanwhile, were semifinalists in the William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition and short-listed for Britain’s Ian St. James Award. Mr. Morais was named the 2015 Citizen Diplomat of the Year – the highest honor granted by Global Ties U.S., a private-public partnership sponsored by the U.S. State Department – “for promoting cross-cultural understanding in all of his literary work.”
