Domesticity

Bob Shacochis, author of the critically acclaimed novel The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, and National Book Award winning-author of such books as Swimming in the Volcano, Easy in the Islands, and The Next New World, hones his nonfiction skills in this tour de force romp through the worlds of eating and eroticism. Domesticity is an irreverent exploration of the sweet and sour evolution of the enduring romance between author and lover. In this relationship, Shacochis stays at home and cooks, all the while reflecting on the ups and downs of a romantic partnership, the connection between heart and stomach, and how the crazed lust of youth evolves into inevitably settling down and, well, simply making dinner. Shacochis's delectable musings on monogamy, emotional and physical separations, dogs, career changes, the stress of the holidays, the aesthetics of food, moving, sex and seafood, friendships, writings and the angst over who is going to do the dishes are deftly folded into seventy-five recipes, half of them of the author's own creation. Guilelessly hilarious, and ever entertaining, Domesticity is Shacochis's celebration of a life spent in proximity to the boiling point. Guilelessly hilarious, and ever entertaining, Domesticity is a celebration of a life spent in proximity to the boiling point, a "prose stew" of audacious candor, a culinary valentine for lovers of literature.

Bob Shacochis is a novelist, essayist, journalist, and educator. A former contributing editor for Harper's and Outside, Shacochis currently teaches in the graduate writing programs at Bennington College and Florida State University. Among his works are the short story collections Easy in the Islands and The Next New World; the novel Swimming in the Volcano, a finalist for the National Book Award; Domesticity, a collection of essays about food and love; Between Heaven and Hell, a travel memoir of his journeys in the Himalaya; and, most recently, the novel The Woman Who Lost Her Soul. The Immaculate Invasion, about the 1994 military intervention in Haiti, was a finalist for the New Yorker Magazine Literary Awards and a New York Times Notable Book. Shacochis's work has received a National Book Award for First Fiction, the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His op-ed commentaries on the U.S. military, Haiti, and Florida politics have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Florida and New Mexico with Ms. F. They have been together for thirty-eight years.