The Catastrophe

by Ian Wedde

The Age of Excess has been good to Christopher Hare. One of the world's top food writers, he has travelled to the best restaurants in the most exotic locations, with the chic dining companion known to readers of his lavish books as The Glace. But, in the new mood of austerity ushered in by the credit crunch, will the world still be interested in what he thinks of Robuchon's caramelised quail? Certainly Christopher's editor isn?t. Christopher's moment of truth catches up with him in the corrupt space between the violent Lebanese civil war of 1975-90 and the luxurious bolt-holes of the Riviera. One evening, almost at the bottom of his over-the-hill slope, he is investigating the budget options in a mediocre restaurant in off-season Nice. These days he is no longer accompanied by The Glace, aka Mary Pepper, who has found international fame and fortune as an art photographer of pornographically eroticised foodstuffs. In the restaurant, Christopher witnesses an assassination. Impulsively, he throws himself into the action, and becomes the almost-willing victim of a political kidnapping. What will be Christopher's fate? Will his ex-wife ?The Glace? come to his rescue? Will the harshly beautiful Palestinian paediatrician Hawwa Habash soften towards her accidental prisoner? Suffused with culinary delights and political menace, The Catastrophe is a novel which speaks urgently to our rapidly changing times.

191 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

New Zealand poet, fiction writer, critic, and art curator.

Ian Wedde is the author of eight novels, fifteen collections of poetry, two collections of essays, and a number of anthologies and art monographs. His most recent novel is The Reed Warbler (2020), and The Little Ache – a German notebook, written while he was in Berlin to research The Reed Warbler, was published in July 2021. His memoir, The Grass Catcher: A Digression About Home, was published in 2014, and his Selected Poems in 2017. Decentred: Selected Essays 2004–2020 will be published in late 2022.

Ian is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and grants. Among the most recent are the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship at Menton in France (2005), a Fulbright New Zealand Travel Award to the USA (2006), an Arts Foundation Laureate Award (2006), a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Auckland (2007), an ONZM (2010), and the Landfall Essay Prize (2010). In 2011–13 Wedde was New Zealand’s poet laureate. He was awarded the Creative New Zealand Writers’ Residency in Berlin 2013–14, and in 2014 the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (poetry). He lives in Auckland.