Crandolin

by Anna Tambour
Publication Date: 14th Nov, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-907681-19-6
Paperback, 382 pages

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 time, place, singularities, and Quests – 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; all are present in an extraordinary novel that is truly for the adwentoursomme.

(Note: Crandolin will be Chômu’s first matte laminate paperback. Let us know what you think. There may be news of other formats soon!)

About The Author

Anna Tambour has worked as an industrial designer, graphic designer, scent developer, cook, and as a grower of fruits too daunting for most purported gourmets. Of no fixed nationality, she currently lives in the Australian bush with a large family of other species, including brayers, medlars, quinces, and a man. Her stories have appeared in an anarchy of places, including infinity plus,The HMS Beagle: BioMedNet Magazine, Scary Food: A Compendium of Gastronomic Atrocity, the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences, Strange Horizons, Rudy Rucker’s Flurb; and numerous anthologies including The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Paper Cities, and Bloody Fabulous. She was a featured author in World Story Day, Istanbul, 2011 (translated and presented by Nurduran Duman, who has also translated and interviewed Tambour for Turkish journals).

What People Say About Previous Work

“Anna Tambour writes with compassion, mischievous humour, and an at times mouth-watering sensuality, delving into the daily world and beyond to find the riches of magic.”

KJ Bishop

“Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales & could never be mistaken for ordinary genre fiction … don’t imagine this as high falutin’ ‘lit’rature’ accessible only to people with advanced degrees. Anyone with a taste for beauty, audacity, sensuality, and wit can find much to enjoy here.”

Faren Miller, Locus

“I have particularly enjoyed Monterra’s fable, and have read it to my pigs Alice, Ferdinand and Isabella, who also appreciated its humour and scope.”

Tom Jaine

“Anna Tambour, on the strength of Spotted Lily and her earlier story collection, Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales &, is one of the most delightful, original, and varied new writers on hand.”

Rich Horton, SF Review

“She writes so far left field that you need binoculars to see her.”

Girlie Jones, Not If You Were the Last Short Story on Earth

What People Say About Crandolin

“For gourmands literary and culinary, Tambour is always a treat, and Crandolin is Tambour at her best. Bold and subtle, rich and delicate, this is fiction to savour, fiction to sustain the soul.”

Hal Duncan

“A fairy tale Dostoevsky would have liked … It’s like it was written by a demented chef.”

David Kowalski

“Immerse yourself in the magical world of Anna Tambour’s Crandolin, a delirious journey that takes the reader through Central Asia and Russia with some fascinating strangers and a donkey, a demanding musical instrument, and delicious hints of nougat and honey.”

Ellen Datlow

“Epicurean fantasy at its finest. Crandolin is an uncanny mating of passion and precision: that Anna Tambour is billed as ‘author’ and not ‘magician’ belies the virtuosity with which she coaxes a whirlwind of gluttonous carnality into her scintillatingly intricate narrative web.”

Rachel Edidin

“Mephistopheles had nothing on this, a helter skelter through time travel and cookery. Bring me a Crandolin.”

Tom Jaine, publisher, Prospect Books

“By turns lyrical and absurdist, whimsical and elegantly true, Crandolin is unlike any novel you will ever have read. Anna Tambour is brilliant, a true original.”

Lucius Shepard

Read a Sample

Read a sample of the wonderful Crandolin at this link.

Online Reviews

- Paul Di Filippo, Locus Online