And if you do not take your hands away, and if you press your face onto the rim, and if you close your eyes so tightly that your darkness is complete, the steam and smell will kiss your lips and lids and make you ready for the slow digestion of the night.

It dares not chance the darkness and the cold. The Devil’s Larder is a literary delicatessen of the dietary extravaganzas. The Devil’s Larder isn’t about one of the seven deadly sins commonly known as gluttony. His most recent novel, The Pesthouse, was published in the UK in March 2007.ĭespite living in Britain, Crace is more successful in the United States, as evidenced by the award of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999. This work was followed by The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress, Quarantine, Being Dead and Six. Continent won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Fiction Prize. From 1976 to 1987 he worked as a freelance journalist for The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers. Two years later he returned to the UK, and worked with the BBC, writing educational programmes. After securing a BA (Hons) in English Literature in 1968, he travelled overseas with the UK organization Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), working in Sudan. He studied for a degree at the Birmingham College of Commerce (now part of Birmingham City University), where he was enrolled as an external student of the University of London. Harvest won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.Ĭrace grew up in Forty Hill, an area at the far northern point of Greater London, close to Enfield where Crace attended Enfield Grammar School. His novel Quarantine, won the Whitbread Novel award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. James 'Jim' Crace is an award-winning English writer.

Devils Larder by Jim Crace