“The Belly of Paris”

Abstract

For his latest work, the New York Times bestselling author of such page-turning culinary histories as The Big Oyster, Cod, and Salt has teamed up with Emile Zola. Into this powerful assertion, the Parmesan still periodically added a thin high note as from a panpipe while the Bries kept thudding like damp tambourines. (pp.238241) Also compelling is Florents reverie from the sh markets where he works as an inspector: A sunbeam streamed through the glass roof of the covered lane, lighting up the rich colors, washed and softened by the waves, the iridescent hues of the shellsh, the opalescence of the whiting, the pearly mackerel, the gold of the red mullets, the lam suits of the herring, the great silvery salmon. American readers were rst introduced to Zolas Les Halles and the colorful cast of shmongers, charcutiers, paranoid in-laws, shopkeepers, revolutionaries, and snitches who inhabit that uncertain world through the 1996 Sun and Moon Press reprint of the original English-language edi- tion of Le Ventre de Paris, translated by Zolas rst English publisher, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly.