'Trailblazer' Roden's Mediterranean love letter to Ebury

Claudia Roden has moved to Ebury with her first book in nearly a decade, which the publisher claimed will be a "love letter to the sun-soaked simplicity of Mediterranean food". 

Ebury publisher Andrew Goodfellow and Lizzy Gray, publishing director for Illustrated, Ebury Press and BBC Books, negotiated world all language rights from Lizzy Kremer at David Higham to Mediterranean, a collection of 120 recipes. The title has also been sold to DK Verlag in Germany, Fontaine Uitgevers in the Netherlands and Ten Speed Press for North America. 

Roden, who was born in Cairo and moved to London in the 1950s, is one of the giants of world cookery books with her first title, 1968's A Book of Middle Eastern Food, credited with revolutionising Western attitudes to Middle Eastern cuisine. She has sold £3.1m worth of books in the UK during the BookScan era, despite not publishing a title since 2012's The Food of Spain (Michael Joseph).    

Ebury, which will publish in 2021, said the new book will be both "a treasure for existing fans and a wonderful introduction for a whole new audience to Claudia’s evocative writing and delicious cooking".

Goodfellow said that Ebury was "thrilled and honoured to bring such an amazing culinary trailblazer to our list. Claudia has shaped so much of our contemporary taste in food and it will be a dream for our cookery team to help her create the definitive book of her long career and bring it to the widest possible audience." 

Roden said: "I am immensely happy and hugely impressed by the way the team at Ebury Press are making every effort to create a stunning book, from the cover design and photography to the typesetting, that reflects the simple and sensuous character of Mediterranean food, both modern and classic, as I know it. It captures so well the mood of the unique world that has been a part of my life."