One autumn in New York, a young Polish poet, studying literature, and a Brazilian anthropologist researching a new book, meet, fall in love and move into a tiny apartment together. Tereza has a lover waiting for her in Poland, Jose a wife and child in Sao Paulo, and it would seem this could only be the most temporary of affairs. Yet there emerges the mesmerizingly explicit portrait of a relationship conducted at the extreme edge of sensuality, defying conventional definition. With no common language, exiled from their culture, for each of them the body of the other becomes everything: spirituality, sustenance, almost unbearable pleasure. Breathtakingly erotic, intensely physical, profoundly intelligent, THE TASTE OF A MAN pursues a path traced by a love based on pure appetite with shameless and unflinching candour, to its ecstatic and terrible conclusion.

Astonishingly sensuous ... a chilling exploration of erotic consumption ... engrossing SUNDAY TIMES Celebratory in tone, it is also a heartfelt, if unrepentant confession ... Drakulic does not disappoint NEW STATESMAN Ghastly in its purist sense; read it in the kitchen if you dare DAILY TELEGRAPH Just reading it made me feel guilty Maureen Freely, LITERARY REVIEW

Slavenka Drakulic was born in Croatia. Her three novels and three non-fiction titles have been translated into many major European languages.