Crandolin

Anna Tambour

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In a medieval cookbook in a special-collections library, near-future London, jaded food and drink authority Nick Kippax finds an alluring stain next to a recipe for the mythical crandolin. He tastes it, ravishing the page. Then he disappears. So begins an 'adwentour' that quantum-leapfrogs from Central Asia in the Middle Ages to Russia under Gorbachev, from the secrets of confectionery to the agonies of making a truly great moustache, from maidens in towers to tiffs between cosmic forces. Food, music, science, fruitloopery, superstition, railways, bladder-pipes and birth-marked Soviet statesmen are all present in an extraordinary novel that is truly 'for the adwentoursomme'.