The Story Of Noble Rot

The sweet taste of the wine comes from the muscadelle grape, and the greyish mould that it attracts ý The mould is lovingly called pourriture noble, noble rot. It is the careless abandon of a wine-satiated afternoon that first brings together the imperious Mrs Masood and the humble carpenter's wife, Malika. As she observes the wealthy older woman whose family is responsible for all her troubles, a plan takes shape in Malika's mindýa plan to recover the money Mrs Masood owes her husband, and to rescue her son from slow death in Mr Masoodýs carpet factory in Karachi. Unknown to both women, the moment marks the beginning of a relationship that is to change their lives for ever. Into the complex web of Malika's plans are drawn Mr Saeed who dwells in his study with his ruby-studded armadillo; the Pathan with the sun-dappled eyes; Momin of the hennaed hands with his love for fish and birds; and Saima with her unpredictable affections and fabulous stories. Vividly narrated and full of funny yet complex dilemmas, this is a novel about the sweetness of life and about how we inexorably drive ourselves to our own doom. It marks the debut of a gifted storyteller from Pakistan.

"Echikson's understanding and explanation of how the business works...is fascinating and easy to swallow."--Michael Philips, Wall Street Journal

Standing In A Room With Eight Thousand Tiny Creatures, Witnessing Them Perform A Dance That Few Humans Even Knew Occurred; This Was Life. Everywhere She Looked, Each Caterpillar Nosed The Air Like A Wand And Out Passed Silk. They Sashayed To The Left And Swivelled To The Right. They Bobbed And Undulated, Dotting The Air In Figure-Eights. They Worked Ceaselessly For Three Days And Nights, With Material Entirely Of Their Own, And With Nothing To Orchestrate Them Besides Their Own Internal Clock. Each, A Perfectly Self-Contained Unit Of Life. When Dia Watched One Spin, She Came Closer To Understanding The Will Of God Than At Any Other Time. Dia Is The Daughter Of A Silk Farmer, Riffat An Innovative, Decisive Entrepreneur. Like Her Mother, Dia Seems At First Sight Spirited And Resourceful. She Seems Free. But Freedom Has Its Own Borders, Patrolled By The Covetous And The Zealous, And There Are Those Who Yearn To Jump The Fence. Then Daanish Comes Back To Karachi For His Father S Funeral, All The Way From Amreeka, A Land Where There Are Plenty Of Rules But Few Restrictions. When Dia And Daanish Meet, They Chafe Against All The Formalities. It Is Left To A Handful Of Silkworms, Fattened On Mulberry Leaves And Slipped Inside A Friend S Dupatta, To Rupture The Fragile Peace And Plans Of Both Their Houses, To Make The Space Noisy Like The Sea In A Shell In Which Dia And Daanish Can Create Something New, All Over Again. Meanwhile, Around Them, New Ways Drive Out Old, As New Hatreds Are Manufactured And Old Ones Revived, And New Rules Are Posted And Then Broken. Trespassing Is Intricately And Delicately Made. Its Characters And Their Destinies Are Utterly Clear Before Us And The Reader Is Driven Hurriedly Through The Book Seeking Shelter For The Characters They Have Come To Love As Much As For Themselves

For as long as anyone can remember, a man named Luca Turin has had an uncanny relationship with smells. He has been compared to the hero of Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume, but his story is in fact stranger, because it is true. It concerns how he made use of his powerful gifts to solve one of the last great mysteries of the human body: how our noses work. Luca Turin can distinguish the components of just about any smell, from the world’s most refined perfumes to the air in a subway car on the Paris metro. A distinguished scientist, he once worked in an unrelated field, though he made a hobby of collecting fragrances. But when, as a lark, he published a collection of his reviews of the world’s perfumes, the book hit the small, insular business of perfume makers like a thunderclap. Who is this man Luca Turin, they demanded, and how does he know so much? The closed community of scent creation opened up to Luca Turin, and he discovered a fact that astonished him: no one in this world knew how smell worked. Billions and billions of dollars were spent creating scents in a manner amounting to glorified trial and error. The solution to the mystery of every other human sense has led to the Nobel Prize, if not vast riches. Why, Luca Turin thought, should smell be any different? So he gave his life to this great puzzle. And in the end, incredibly, it would seem that he solved it. But when enormously powerful interests are threatened and great reputations are at stake, Luca Turin learned, nothing is quite what it seems. Acclaimed writer Chandler Burr has spent four years chronicling Luca Turin’s quest to unravel the mystery of how our sense of smell works. What has emerged is an enthralling, magical book that changes the way we think about that area between our mouth and our eyes, and its profound, secret hold on our lives.

"As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder.” —Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo’s sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh. This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.

Today, millions of people around the world enjoy California's legendary wines, unaware that 90 years ago the families who made these wines--and in many cases still do – turned to struggle and subterfuge to save the industry we now cherish. When Prohibition took effect in 1919, three months after one of the greatest California grape harvests of all time, violence and chaos descended on Northern California. Federal agents spilled thousands of gallons of wine in the rivers and creeks, gun battles erupted on dark country roads, and local law enforcement officers, sympathetic to their winemaking neighbors, found ways to run circles around the intruding authorities. For the state's winemaking families--many of them immigrants from Italy--surviving Prohibition meant facing impossible decisions, whether to give up the idyllic way of life their families had known for generations, or break the law to enable their wine businesses and their livelihood to survive. Including moments of both desperation and joy, Sosnowski tells the inspiring story of how ordinary people fought to protect to a beautiful and timeless culture in the lovely hills and valleys of now-celebrated wine country.