About the Author

Penny Simpson is Head of Press at Welsh National Opera, coming full circle after a series of cleaning and receptionist's jobs at Glyndebourne Opera House, which helped support her at art college in Brighton(and subsidised a taste in designer shoes). She trained as a journalist, specialising in the arts, before winning Barclays/TMA Theatre Critic of the Year in 1991. Her assignments took her to a post-war Croatian island beach to review The Tempest, and to Nikko, Japan, where she hung out with yabusame horseback archers. A playwright and author of short fiction which has appeared in anthologies from Bloomsbury, Honno and Virago, her debut collection of short fiction DOGdays was published in 2003. This is her first novel.

Reviews

A"[An] extravaganza where the real and the imagined take turn and turn about... sumptuously detailed and fantastical... [this novel is] at once full of disturbing delicacy, and at the same time [forceful]... [marked by its] humour, verve and hallucinatory strangeness.A"Clare Morgan, Times Literary Supplement, 25/7/08"The fictional heroine of this remarkable novel is a seven-foot Jewish girl with a genius for cookery, and the resistible rise of Nazi thuggery is the backdrop for her recipes and menus. The fact that Esther is also anorexic adds a contemporary twist to its period setting. Comparisons with magic realism come immediately to mind and the author manages to balance the fantastical elements with the gritty realism of the descent into fascism... the real and imaginary characters are equally magical, as are the incredible creations of this precursor of today's celebrity chefs." Morning Star "The 7ft plus heroine of Simpson's book The Banquet of Esther Rosenbaum contrasts strikingly with familiar fact-or-fiction cabaret personalities like Sally Bowles or Marlene Dietrich... Working for the most famous chefs and bakers of her day, [Esther] expresses both political and personal yearnings through her increasingly [fantastical] recipes, served to Jews and Gestapo alike... Esther's survival depends partly on her brilliant culinary skills, but also on her ability to 'pass' as non-Jewish. It is not a natural ability; she adops a man's greatcot and top hat, beneath which she becomes increasingly emaciated. Simpson vividly conveys how the optimistic creator of 'Kiss-of-Hope biscuits' hides, denies, and finally regains her larger-than-life identity." Amanda Hopkinson, Jewish Chronicle, 2/5/08. "Penny Simpson has a vivid imagination. At times it takes physical shape and goes down streets like a searchlight; scalpel following behind... This allows her formidable talent to exercise itself on both the likely and the unlikely." Planet. "A born storyteller... a richly-imagined tale written with zest." Nicholas Murray.