Lily Prior biography

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Lily Prior

Lily Prior

Lily Prior Biography

Lily Prior is a British novelist whose works are often "set in a lush, rural Italian landscape where women have scents that set the hillsides a-tingle and food has supernatural properties," as New York Times Book Review critic Liesl Schillinger noted. She is the author of La Cucina, Nectar, Ardour and Cabaret. Prior's books have been translated into French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish, among other languages. She divides her time between London and Italy.

Lily Prior's website

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Interview

Lily Prior describes the setting of her first book, how she hopes people will react to it and her plans for her next book.

How would you summarize La Cucina?
A delicious tale of risotto and rumpy-pumpy.

Describe your travels in Italy and how they related to the inspiration for and creation of this book.
I knew from the very beginning that Sicily would be the setting for La Cucin a larger-than-life backdrop for my larger-than-life heroine, Rosa Fiore. This magical island has all the ingredients I needed: Mediterranean sun, light, color and culture: intense heat inspiring intense passions; a culinary tradition that exalts the concentrated flavors of the island's food; an air of mystery and melancholy; the fascination of the mafia; the dark, deserted alleyways of downtown Palermo; the danger and disappearances; the crumbling palazzi, the quirky characters; curiosities like the miles of expensive autostrada on stilts that lead precisely nowhere, and of course, the volcano; I like volcanoes.

What ideas came first in the process of writing this novel? Did you conceive of the setting, the plot, or a particular character first?
What came first were the very clear ideas of the central characters, Rosa and l'Inglese. Their shared passion for food was what led to their extraordinary love affair, so the novel was always going to be ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Lily Prior at BookBrowse
La Cucina jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Lily Prior but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Diana Abu-Jaber

    Diana Abu-Jaber

    Diana Abu-Jaber is the award-winning author of seven books of fiction and nonfiction, including Crescent and The Language of Baklava. She lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    La Cucina

    Try:
    Crescent
    by Diana Abu-Jaber

  • Erica Bauermeister

    Erica Bauermeister

    Erica Bauermeister is the author of The School of Essential Ingredients (Jan 2009), a novel about eight students and their cooking teacher set in a restaurant kitchen. Her non-fiction work includes 500 Great Books by Women: A... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    La Cucina

    Try:
    The School of Essential Ingredients
    by Erica Bauermeister

We recommend 5 similar authors

View all 5 Read-Alikes

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