'Very funny, very stylish and very moving' ADAM THIRLWELL

'An irresistible novel - I loved it' CLAIRE POWELL

'Deliciously unsettling and thoroughly enjoyable' AYSEGÜL SAVAS

An evening of perfect preparation. A night of uninvited chaos.

For the hostess, food has always been about growing up. From the pancakes your grandmother made you, dolloped with jam, to the salty glug of your first oyster. Now, poised at the brink of midlife, the hostess prepares for a dinner party in her new apartment. With a hunger for the finer things in life, she folds linen napkins into neat triangles, arranges wildflowers for the table and puts on a jazz playlist the projects effortless cool.

But her composure begins to falter when her guests arrive drunk and late, downing bottles of her perfectly cooled wine and trailing water over the floor. Here comes the chain-smoking professor who never says the right thing, the husband glued to his smartphone, the wife who makes a secret pass at your boyfriend.

As small talk and social preening give way to sexual tension and lost inhibitions, the hostess struggles to maintain control over an evening far beyond her wildest imaginings.

"An entertaining, finely observed chamber play and a great culinary reading pleasure" - ELLE

"Every fear you've ever had about hosting a dinner party crops up in this half dream, half choose-your-own-adventure, in which the events of the evening are affected by minor differences: which guests arrive first, and which are late? Who has had a drink on the way? Do they take their shoes off at the door? The characters' conversation follows similar strange, winding tangents to the surreal narrative. Get the crémant open" - GQ

"Astutely analyses social interaction and presents it in a humorous and ironic way" - Vogue Germany

"With her well-seasoned, original menu Teresa Präauer proves herself to be an amusingly sophisticated hostess and stimulating companion at this literary dinner" - Wiener Zeitung

"Präauer has succeeded in creating a highly subtle, apt study of the milieu, an elegantly composed text spiced with clever irony" - OÖNachrichten

"Teresa Präauer is one of the brightest candles on the cake of contemporary German literature . . . This is breathtakingly funny, comical and very, very insightful" - MDR Best New Books

"Hardly ever has such an intellectually precise novel about taste been written" - NZZ

"Entertaining, witty, amusing and clever. It offers plenty of material for the next table conversation" - WDR3 Gutenberg's World

"Sharp-witted and sharp-tongued ... as refreshing as a Grüner Veltiner" - Stuttgarter Zeitung

"With these almost 200 pages, Präauer has succeeded in creating a really funny novel that sometimes reads as if Thomas Bernhard and Yasmina Reza wanted to spend an evening together" - Annkathrin Allgöwer

"Funny, biting and very profound" - Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung