29 September 2008

The new book has been officially 'out' now for a fortnight. In the UK it's called (as I intended) "Sri Owen's Indonesian Food" and the cover looks like this:

It's published here by Pavilion, which is an imprint of Anova Books, based in London. All the Anova / Pavilion people have been absolutely marvellous, and I'd like to thank them here for being helpful, considerate, patient, and always friendly and cheerful - and highly efficient as well.

In North America, the book is published by Interlink, who I'm sure (from previous experience with American publishers) are equally wonderful - so far, however, I've had almost no contact with them. They call my book "The Indonesian Kitchen", and it looks like this:

But the differences between the two books, when you open them up, are trivial. No invitations - not yet, anyway - to fly to New York or San Francisco to help launch "The Indonesian Kitchen", but we've made up for that in London by having three launch parties in just over a week - as I mentioned in my last posting [below].

The evening at the Indonesian Embassy was a particularly good party - more than a hundred people there, and I spent most of my time signing copies of the book. I made a speech - just a little one - to the assembled diplomats, publishers, agents, old friends, the Anglo-Indonesian Society, and several people who I knew I'd met before but whose names escaped me ...

- while my lecture at Asia House, a few evenings afterwards (actually the annual Yan-kit So Memorial Lecture), led to many questions from the audience, and discussion at the reception that followed.

Comments

[John Braine]

Sri Owen's Indonesian Food is essential for everyone who loves Indonesian food - and equally for anyone interested in a special cook book full of interesting commnents from an interesting person.

Before buying have a look at Murni's book review to see what I mean: http://www.murnis.com/articles_by_murni/sri_owens_indonesian_food.htm

John Braine
San Francisco

[Juliette Rossant]

I published a review of The Indonesian Kitchen today on Super Chef: http://superchefblog.com/2009/01/sri-owen-indonesian-kitchen.html

Many thanks!