A BRACINGLY ORIGINAL, BOUNDARY BREAKING EXPLORATION OF COOKING AND THE KITCHEN, FROM A RISING STAR IN FOOD WRITING

'A manifesto for reclaiming cooking as an intellectual... a brave, honest book' SUNDAY TIMES

'An intense thought-provoking enquiry into the very nature of cooking, which stayed with me long after I finished reading it' NIGELLA LAWSON

'Rich in pleasure and revelation' OBSERVER

Small Fires reinvents cooking - that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, splattering red hot sauce on our books - as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe; the power of small fires burning everywhere.

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FURTHER PRAISE FOR SMALL FIRES

'Brave enough to hurt feelings, delicious enough for no one to care' New York Times

'Smart, thoughtful, creative' Ruby Tandoh

'Destined to become essential reading... Bold, beautiful, daring' Rachel Roddy

'Possesses an intellectual fleet footedness and exuberance akin to the writing of Deborah Levy or Rebecca Solnit' I NEWS

'I loved this genre-busting book. Shows that cooking can be a wild kind of magic' Bee Wilson

'Liberating... a new way to write about food' Jonathan Nunn Vittles

'Revolutionary... wakes up the reader's senses' Times Literary Supplement

At once relatable and mind-expanding' Vogue US

'One of the most original food books I've ever read, at once intelligent and sensuous, witty, provoking and truly delicious' Olivia Laing

'Tender, electric, intimately transformative' Nina Mingya Powles

"[Rebuilds] something epic from morsels of funny memoir, acute social criticism and food writing the likes of which you'll never have read before... Rich in pleasure and revelation" - Observer

"A manifesto for reclaiming cooking as an intellectual... a rewarding book that stayed with me - and, like all brilliant food writing, it made me think twice about what I choose to eat and who I eat it with... a brave, honest book" - Sunday Times

"In Small Fires, Johnson explores how the food we make and the ways we make it-and then the stories we tell about making it-shape who we are. . . . Mixing deeply personal anecdotes with more complex theory, Small Fires is at once relatable and mind-expanding" - Vogue US

"Insightful, radical, beautiful" - Guardian

"Revolutionary... this is a book that wakes up the reader's senses and delivers critical arguments "spattered" in oil, like the pages of a much-used recipe book, making them palatable." - Times Literary Supplement

"The most compelling book about cooking I've read this year, perhaps ever. Rebecca is a writer of extraordinary intelligence and wit, and I would push this book with feverish enthusiasm into the hands of anyone who spends time in the kitchen." - Evening Standard

"Possesses an intellectual fleet footedness and exuberance akin to the writing of Deborah Levy or Rebecca Solnit, as sentences skip between mischievous punning and impassioned agitation... the enthusiasm of the writing here is generous, embracing and emboldening" - i news

"A gorgeous book... I love to read about the body and I love to read about food, and this tender little book allowed me to do both" - Guardian

"A dazzling, truly deep dive into a single recipe for a simple tomato sauce that manages to get into gender and patriarchy and sex and desire and being embodied and legitimacy and mess, it is a magnificent book and now I have a dream of somehow being cooked for by Johnson, but that being unlikely I should at the very least pay my respects by cooking the holy recipe myself" - Michelle Tea