My first book chapter is now officially out there, and I just got my copy! I must confess myself fittingly proud and excited.

The book Commensality: From Everyday Food to Feast was published by Bloomsbury in February and is based on the conference ‘Commensality and Social Organisation‘ held at University of Copenhagen in 2011.

The volume is edited by Susanne Kerner, Cynthia Chou and Morten Warmind and include a wide range of fields and topics, ranging from bronze age feasts over the culinary triangle in antiquity to contemporary Vegan activism.

My chapter is about alcohol and drinking cultures in Mo Yan‘s novel Liquorland (Jiuguo 酒国, translated by Howard Goldblatt as The Republic of Wine in 2000) from 1992, with references to historical social and artistic uses of alcohol in China. It investigates how established Chinese drinking norms – such as the hierarchical toast ritual, the poetical connotations of drinking alone and the heroic feat of drinking without getting drunk – are described and subverted in the novel.