The cook (novel)
The cook is the seventh novel by the Swiss author Martin Suter . It was published by Diogenes Verlag in 2010 and is set in Zurich shortly before and during the euro crisis . The novel is a mixture of globalization-critical drama and cookbook. It was filmed in 2014 under the direction of Ralf Huettner with the title Der Koch .
content
Marawan is a Tamil asylum seeker who works as a kitchen helper in the Zurich gourmet restaurant Chez Huwyler . He has been a passionate cook since his early youth, trained by his great-aunt and in South Indian restaurants. His work colleagues are not aware of his passion and talent as a chef, because of his asylum status and the rigid hierarchy in the kitchen, he cannot live out this professionally. To impress the waitress Andrea, whom he admires and who gives him the opportunity to cook for her, he secretly borrows a rotary evaporator from the restaurant to prepare certain essences one evening . Using certain techniques of molecular cuisine, he creates an aphrodisiac menu based on Ayurvedic recipes. The enjoyment of these dishes leads to Andrea sleeping with him, although as a lesbian she is not interested in men.
The unauthorized borrowing of the rotary evaporator is discovered and leads to Maravan being terminated without notice. When Andrea found out about this, she also quit, because she was outraged that envy, resentment and prejudice were the actual driving forces behind Maravan's dismissal.
Maravan does not find a new job and therefore accepts Andreas' suggestion to run a catering service called Love Food together . As customers, they are referred to pairs of patients from a sex therapist who is a friend of Andrea, whose sex life is to be enlivened by an aphrodisiac menu. This business relationship is very successful at first, but ends abruptly when it comes out that Andrea has also accepted an order from one of the husbands to help him make an affair with a menu. This puts Love Food in considerable economic trouble.
Maravan is becoming increasingly desperate because he has to support relatives in civil war-torn Sri Lanka with considerable amounts of money. Since it is also about the procurement of expensive medication for his great-aunt, which is beloved above all else, he finally declares himself ready to use his cooking skills for a morally questionable hostess service. After a while, however, he realizes that the money that Love Food earns comes partly from the trade in weapons that are delivered to the parties to the civil war in Sri Lanka.
When his nephew falls as a child soldier in the civil war and his great-aunt dies of a heart attack, he decides to stop working for Love Food . He cooks one last time for one of the masterminds of the arms deals with Sri Lanka and kills him with a drug that was put into a drink and caused a heart attack.
Specialty
The appendix to the book contains the recipes of two of the most important menus prepared by Maravan for Love Food in the course of the plot .
Book editions
- Hardcover: Diogenes, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-257-06739-2 (for 4 weeks in 2010 at number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list )
- Paperback: ibid. 2011, ISBN 978-3-257-23999-7
- Audio book, read by Heikko Deutschmann : 6 audio CDs, ibid. 2010, ISBN 978-3-257-80289-4