Imagine the River Tiber as an alimentary tract. Picture a hungry saint. Think of erotic Renaissance fruit paintings transubstantiation & a tiramisu cafe where magic is surely on the menu... This highly original interpretation of Romes history culture art & religion takes the form of a book about food thats not really about food at all. In Al Dente Winner takes us on a stroll through the city as he muses on all things comestible & much else besides. We learn about Rome as metropolis & necropolis about tasty vineyard snails & the food-&-sex scandal that sent Saint Jerome packing. The cinematic greats such as Argento Fellini & Ferreri are discussed alongside historical political satire where grocery orgies were art & the penis was the subject of hagiographies. There are the bloodthirsty antics of an eighteenth-century executioner who worked for the pope stories of immolation architecture & artichokes & a telephone interview with a nun who makes Eucharistic wafers. Winner is a master of wit with a seemingly insatiable appetite for peculiar detail & Al Dente provides an intriguing new portrait of a remarkable city
- a veritable trifle of Roman bedrock & apogee cosmos & counterculture to be devoured with gusto. Buon appetito...