| book details |

The Taste of Longing: Ethel Mulvany and her Starving Prisoners of War Cookbook

By (author) Suzanne Evans

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normal price: R 629.95

Price: R 566.95

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| book description |

â€œEnjoy your homes. Enjoy your food. There is nothing that can take their place.â€ Half a world away from her home in Manitoulin Island, Ethel Mulvany is starving in Singaporeâ€™s infamous Changi Prison, along with hundreds of other women jailed there as POWs during the Second World War. They beat back pangs of hunger by playing decadent games of make-believe and writing down recipes filled with cream, raisins, chocolate, butter, cinnamon, ripe fruitâ€”the unattainable ingredients of peacetime, of home, of memory. In this novelistic, immersive biography, Suzanne Evans presents a truly individual account of WWII through the eyes of Ethelâ€”mercurial, enterprising, combative, stubborn, and wholly herself. The Taste of Longing follows Ethel through the fall of Singapore in 1942, the years of her internment, and beyond. As a prisoner, she devours dog biscuits and book spines, befriends spiders and smugglers, and endures torture and solitary confinement. As a free woman back in Canada, she fights to build a life for herself in the midst of trauma and burgeoning mental illness. Woven with vintage recipes and transcribed tape recordings, the story of Ethel and her fantastical POW Cookbook is a testament to the often-overlooked strength of women in wartime. Itâ€™s a story of the unbreakable power of imagination, generosity, and pure heart.