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  • Published: 6 April 2001
  • ISBN: 9780552998833
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $29.99

Five Quarters Of The Orange




From the bestselling author of Chocolat, a powerful drama about the dark repercussions of Nazi occupation in a rural French village.

A gripping page-turner set in occupied France from international multi-million copy seller Joanne Harris. With the sensuous writing we come to expect from her, this book has a darker core. Perfect for fans of Victoria Hislop, Fiona Valpy, Maggie O'Farrell and Rachel Joyce, this fascinating and vivid journey through human cruelty and kindness is a gripping and compelling read.
'Her strongest writing yet: as tangy and sometimes bitter as Chocolat was smooth' -- Independent
'Harris indulges her love of rich and mouthwatering descriptive passages, appealing to the senses... Thoroughly enjoyable' -- Observer
'Outstanding...beautifully written' -- Daily Mail
'Very thought provoking. I read the book in two days and am still thinking about it a few days down the line' -- ***** Reader review
'Absolutely gripping from the very first page' -- ***** Reader review
'Joanne Harris at her very best!'-- ***** Reader review
'Superb' -- ***** Reader review
'I just couldn't put this one down'-- ***** Reader review 2

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THE PAST WILL ALWAYS CATCH UP WITH YOU...

Beyond the main street of Les Laveuses runs the Loire: smooth and brown as a sunning snake - but hiding a deadly undertow beneath its moving surface. This is where Framboise, a secretive widow, plies her culinary trade at the crêperie - and lets her memory play strange games.

As her nephew attempts to exploit the growing success of the country recipes Framboise has inherited from her mother - a woman remembered with contempt by the villagers - memories of a disturbed childhood during the German Occupation flood back, and expose a past full of betrayal, blackmail and lies...

  • Published: 6 April 2001
  • ISBN: 9780552998833
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Joanne Harris

Joanne Harris’s Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She is the author of many other bestselling novels, including Lollipop Shoes and Peaches for Monsieur le Curé, both also featuring Vianne Rocher, as is her new novel The Strawberry Thief. She has also written acclaimed novels in such diverse genres as fantasy based on Norse myth (Runemarks, Runelight, The Gospel of Loki), and the Malbry cycle of dark psychological thrillers (Gentlemen & Players, Blueeyedboy, and Different Class).

Born in Barnsley, of an English father and a French mother, she spent fifteen years as a teacher before (somewhat reluctantly) becoming a full-time writer. In 2013, she was awarded an MBE. She lives in Yorkshire, plays bass and flute in a band first formed when she was sixteen, and works in a shed in her garden.

Also by Joanne Harris

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Praise for Five Quarters Of The Orange

Harris presents a complicated but beautiful tale involving misfortune, mystery and intense family relations ... This intense work brims with sensuality and sensitivity

Publishers Weekly

Joanne Harris is masterly in her conjuring of the sense of time and place in the wartime segments of the book, and with almost poetic style she brings to life the smell of country cooking, and the movement of fish in the Loire and the stifling smell of orange oil

Yorkshire Post

The pace and balance of the book make it as enjoyable as Chocolat

France In Print

This shape-shifting drama switches easily between Occupied France and the present day. Recipes for luscious meals and homebrewed liqueurs interlace a storyline that spoons suspense and black humour into the blender in equal measure

Irish Independent

Joanne Harris's rather brilliant Five Quarters of the Orange is a fascinating page-turner with a compelling climax ... This is an absolutely remarkable book that deserves to be read over and over again

Punch

Harris's vividly sensual account of a nine-year-old's loves, loyalties and misunderstandings is a powerful and haunting story of childhood betrayal

Good Housekeeping

The author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat must win more plaudits for this elegant and epicurean novel permeated with the tantalizing flavours of rustic France

Publishing News

If you enjoyed Chocolat and Blackberry Wine, you are certainly ready to embark on this journey back to war-torn France, an unresolved past and a fraught future

Oxford Times

Vastly enjoyable, utterly gripping

The Times

Harris's prose is deeply evocative - the scent of freshly baked bread, fruit and wine and oranges rises off the pages. Darker than her other novels and less sentimental, this is a wonderful book; don't miss out

Image Magazine

Evocative descriptions of food and rural France are what we have come to expect from the best-selling author of Chocolat. With recipes and luscious depictions of food, this is the perfect book for a gastronome

Eve Magazine

Harris indulges her love of rich and mouthwatering descriptive passages, appealing to the senses ... Thoroughly enjoyable

Observer

Just as she did in Chocolat, Harris indulges her love of rich and mouth-watering descriptive passages, appealing to the senses with seductively foreign names, and evoking the textures and smells of food. These descriptions are suffused with a child's wide-eyed wonder that lends the story a magical quality, almost like a folk tale or a children's story. Even having the Occupation as a backdrop, Harris sets out to tell a story that proves, like her previous books, to be thoroughly enjoyable...

Guardian

Rich in detail, engaging all the senses and drawing one compulsively on to the unexpected climax

Time Out

As lyrically succulent as Chocolat and Blackberry Wine, this book probes darker corners of loss, enmity and betrayal

P S Magazine

Hugely enjoyable

Sunday Mirror

Joanne Harris a naturally sensuous writer, but her latest book has a dark core...Her descriptive and narrative talents are put to a profounder use...This gripping tale is bound to be made into a film. It's as vivid a journey through human cruelty and kindness as I've read this year

Daily Telegraph

A dark, gripping tale of how smell leads to tragedy and murder. Harris's vividly sensual account of a nine-year-olds loves, loyalties and misunderstandings is a powerful and haunting story of childhood betrayal

Good Housekeeping

Five Quarters of the Orange completes a hat-trick of food-titled tales with a riveting story about a young girl brought up in occupied France who's now an old woman harbouring a terrible secret. Harris is light-years ahead of her contemporaries. She teases you with snippets of a bigger story, gently pulling you in with her vivid descriptions of rural France until you can actually smell the oranges. Read it

Now Magazine

Beautifully told, it's a haunting and tantalizing tale that stays with you long after turning the last page

Mirror

The luscious prose, abounding in culinary metaphors and similes, which made Chocolat so readable, is once more in evidence ... a satisfying page-turner

Irish Examiner

Her strongest writing yet: as tangy and sometimes bitter as Chocolat was smooth

Independent

Harris is an acute observer of the lush French countryside, and her descriptions of it are a delight ... A luscious feast of a book

Literary Review

Outstanding ... beautifully written

Daily Mail

Harris' love affair with food and France continues. Savour it

Family Circle

Harris evocatively balances the young Framboise's perspectives on life against grown-up truths with compelling, zestful flair

Elle

The dreamy and almost fair-tale narrative remains undisturbed by the spectre of the Occupation, as Harris avoids moral or historical themes, to ponder on the internal and social turmoil of the protagonists ... Harris seduces her readers with culinary delights, through suggestive textures and smells which indulge the senses

What's On In London

Harris has a gift for injecting magic into the everyday ... She is an old-fashioned writer in the finest sense, believing in a strong narrative, fully rounded characters, a complex plot, even a moral

Daily Telegraph

Gripping ... Harris is on assured form

The Sunday Times