10% off all books and free delivery over £40
Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.

The Taste of Longing

View All Editions

The selected edition of this book is not available to buy right now.
Add To Wishlist
Write A Review

About

The Taste of Longing Synopsis

“Enjoy your homes. Enjoy your food. There is nothing that can take their place.” Half a world away from her home in Manitoulin Island, Ethel Mulvany is starving in Singapore’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 fruit—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 Ethel—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. It’s a story of the unbreakable power of imagination, generosity, and pure heart.

About This Edition

ISBN: 9781771134897
Publication date: 1st December 2020
Author: Suzanne Evans
Publisher: Between the Lines
Format: Paperback
Pagination: 306 pages
Genres: Prisoners of war
Biography: historical, political and military
Social and cultural history