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The Debt To Pleasure

Brief Description
The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester is the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award 1996. To like something is to want to ingest it and, in that sense, is to submit to the world; to like something is to succumb, in a small but... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award 1996.

The debut novel by the Booker Prize-longlisted author of Capital and The Wall

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The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester is the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award 1996.

To like something is to want to ingest it and, in that sense, is to submit to the world; to like something is to succumb, in a small but contentful way, to death.

Tarquin Winot—hedonist, food obsessive, ironist and snob—travels a circuitous route from the Hotel Splendide in Portsmouth to his cottage in Provence. Along the way, he tells the story of his childhood and beyond through a series of delectable menus, organised by season. But this is no ordinary cookbook, and as we are drawn into Tarquin's world, a far more sinister mission slowly reveals itself...

Winner of the 1996 Whitbread First Novel Award, John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure is a wickedly funny ode to food; an erotic and sensual culinary journey. Its elegant, intelligent and unhinged narrator is nothing less than a work of art himself.

Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

Series: Picador Collection

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781035091386

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 05 March 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Picador

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 16.0mm

Width: 132.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 160g

Pages: 240

About the Author

John Lanchester is the author of five novels, The Debt to Pleasure, Mr Phlllips, Fragrant Harbour, Capital, and The Wall. His books have won the Hawthornden Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the E. M. Forster Award, and the Premi Llibreter, been longlisted for the Booker Prize and have been translated into twenty-five lanuages. He is a contributing editor to the London Review of Books and a regular contributor to the New Yorker.

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