From one of our most interesting literary figures former editor of Granta, former fiction editor at The New Yorker, acclaimed author of Among the Thugs a sharp, funny, exuberant, close-up account of his headlong plunge into the life of a professional cook.Expanding on his James Beard Award-winning New Yorker article, Bill Buford gives us a richly evocative chronicle of his experience as slave to Mario Batali in the kitchen of Batalis three-star New York restaurant, Babbo.In a fast-paced, candid narrative, Buford describes three frenetic years of trials and errors, disappointments and triumphs, as he worked his way up the Babbo ladder from kitchen bitch to line cook . . . his relationship with the larger-than-life Batali, whose story he learns as their friendship grows through (and sometimes despite) kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters . . . and his immersion in the arts of butchery in Northern Italy, of preparing game in London, and making handmade pasta at an Italian hillside trattoria.Heat is a marvelous hybrid: a memoir of Bufords kitchen adventure, the story of Batalis amazing rise to culinary (and extra-culinary) fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters. It is a book to delight in, and to savour.From the Hardcover edition.