The flavors of modernity: food and the novel

Although its title would appear to promise some kind of comparative perspective, Biasin does in fact restrict his analysis to the Italian novel, although there are often useful references to the wider European context (for example, Woolf, Joyce, Proust). Whilst the book is, therefore, mainly of interest to students and scholars of modern Italian narrative, it can be read with profit by non-Italianists (who are also helped by Biasin's decision to quote in English from the novels he examines). Indeed, the numerous references to theorists, philosophers, and anthro- pologists as diverse as Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Bakhtin, Bourdieu, and Piero Camporesi also help to broaden the potential readership of the book.