The author and journalist talks about bonding with her father over steak tartare and how food plays an integral part in all her novels
I don’t eat while I write but I bung something in the oven and write while it’s cooking. I probably associate writing with the reward of food. All my novels contain enthusiastic descriptions of meals. I think food, both symbolically and for real, is a brilliant metaphor for everything that is good about the domestic, the family, love and small but important things.
My biological parents met over dinner. She – a young, naive Pakistani girl studying in New York – was invited to mid-1960s Brussels by a girl who then asked her uncle – my Dad-to-be, aged 37 – to make up the numbers. That evening, after being charming at table, he proposed marriage. Mum probably later regretted accepting and she had me at 17. They only stayed together for two years. But here I am. Everything goes back to food.
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