Bloomsbury lands Eden’s 'transporting' kitchen-centred literary memoir

Bloomsbury has signed Cold Kitchen: On Departures, Arrivals and Coming Home to the Table by writer and critic Caroline Eden.

Rowan Yapp, head of Bloomsbury Lifestyle, acquired world rights, excluding the US, from Jessica Woollard at David Higham Associates for publication in spring 2024.

Eden is a writer and critic contributing to the Guardian, Financial Times, BBC and Times Literary Supplement whose latest book, Red Sands (Quadrille), won the André Simon Award for best food book in 2020.

Her 2018 book, Black Sea (Quadrille), won the Guild of Food Writers Food Book Award 2019, the James Avery Award at the Andre Simon Food & Drink Book Awards 2019, the Art of Eating Prize for Best Food Book of the Year, and the Edward Stanford Travel Award for Best Food & Drink Book.

Cold Kitchen is described by the publisher as “a transporting literary memoir with a subterranean kitchen as main character”. The synopsis goes on: “In it, Caroline writes about how food lies at the heart of our understanding of the world, how other places make us what we are, and the meaning of ‘home’. From the kitchen table, a series of dishes and ingredients delivers us, chapter by chapter, to regions that Caroline is well-known for writing about: Central Asia, Turkey, and eastern Europe.

“Pushing food and travel writing in an entirely new direction, it is a supple book to wander in, moving through the seasons. From the kitchen table, we traverse a remote Scottish hillside in search of rare cloudberries, wander through wintertime Istanbul, travel to Poland to consider food in art and unfinished histories and, baking late into the night, cast a line to Ukraine. The kitchen is the steady constant that the book always returns to and the result is an abundant and flavourful tapestry filled with new ideas on appetite, pleasure and restlessness.”

Yapp said: “I have admired Caroline’s previous books for many reasons, especially for her transporting writing about place. It is wonderful to bring her to Bloomsbury with a fully narrative book which crosses genres in the best kind of way.”

Eden said: "I am completely thrilled to work with Bloomsbury on this book of personal recollections where I present my Edinburgh kitchen as an effective portal to other countries, times and lives, while also showing it as a place of transformation that changed my life for the better."

Woollard described Eden’s books as “dazzling". She said: “In this book of appetite, pleasure and restlessness, she pushes both genres in an entirely new direction. I’m excited to see her published by Bloomsbury."