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:
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.