Picador serves up Auslander's Mother for Dinner

Picador has snapped up Mother for Dinner by Shalom Auslander, billed as the “funniest novel of the 2020s” and looking at identity, inheritance and cannibalism.

Editorial director Kris Doyle has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Mother for Dinner from Hal Fessenden at Penguin Random House USA. Picador will publish in hardcover, e-book and audio in February 2021.

The novel follows Seventh Seltzer who has done everything he can to break from the traditions of the past, but in his overbearing, narcissistic mother’s last moments, she whispers in his ear the two words he always knew she would: “Eat me”.

Its blurb explains: "This is not unusual, as the Seltzers are Cannibal-Americans, a once proud and thriving ethnic group, but for Seventh, it raises some serious questions. Of practical concern, she’s six foot two and weighs over 30 stone—even divided up between Seventh and his 11 brothers, that's a lot of red meat. Plus Second keeps kosher, Ninth is vegan and Sixth is dead. To make matters worse, even if he can wrangle his brothers together for a feast, the Can-Am people have assimilated, and the only living Cannibal who knows how to perform the ancient ritual is their Uncle Ishmael, a far from reliable guide.

“Beyond the practical, Seventh struggles with the sense of guilt and responsibility he feels—to his mother, to his people and to his unique cultural heritage. His mother always taught him he was a link in a chain, stretching back centuries. But he’s getting tired of chains.”

Auslander was nominated for the Koret Award for writers under 35, has published articles in Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, Tablet magazine, the New Yorker, and has had stories aired on NPR's “This American Life”. He is the author of the short story collection Beware of God (Picador), the memoir Foreskin's Lament (Picador), and the novel Hope: A Tragedy (Picador).

Doyle said: “This year has been bad. But there’s finally something to be happy about: Shalom Auslander’s new novel is here. The Sunday Times said Shalom’s last novel, Hope: A Tragedy, was 'probably the funniest novel of the decade. Well, I’m calling it early: Mother for Dinner will be the funniest novel of the 2020s. Thanks to his fearless imagination, inimitable voice and indisputable genius, reading Shalom is like watching a tightrope artist. This time he’s doing the tight rope on a unicycle, dropping the safety net and setting the rope on fire—I defy you to look away!”