Cooking in the Wrong Century

An irresistibly witty satire about a dinner party where the foodie guests have a grand amount of taste but no social clue at all.

“Clever, amusing and delightfully compact. To be consumed in one sitting, it pairs wonderfully with a glass or four of fizz.”  — Daily Mail

For the hostess, food has always been about growing up. From the pancakes your grandmother made, dolloped with jam, to the salty glug of your very first oyster. Now, poised at the brink of midlife, the hostess prepares for a dinner party in her new apartment, desperate for the envy of her cultured friends. With a hunger for the finer things in life, she folds linen napkins into neat triangles, arranges wildflowers for the table and puts on a playlist that projects effortless cool.

But her composure begins to falter when her guests arrive drunk and late, downing bottles of her perfectly cooled wine and trailing water over the floor. Here comes the chain-smoking professor who never says the right thing, the husband glued to his smartphone, the wife who makes a secret pass at your boyfriend.

As small talk and social preening give way to sexual tension and lost inhibitions, the hostess struggles to maintain control over an evening far beyond her wildest imaginings. Outrageously funny and keenly observed, this is the 1st novel by Austrian powerhouse Teresa Präauer to be translated into English, and a delectable feast of social satire for readers of Perfection and The Anthropologists."Every fear you’ve ever had about hosting a dinner party crops up in this half dream, half choose-your-own-adventure"
—GQ, The best books of 2025Teresa Präauer is a prize-winning Austrian author, essayist and playwright. She is a literary columnist for German newspapers and magazines, and lectures at universities internationally. Cooking in the Wrong Century is the first of her novels to be translated into English and received the highly prestigious Bremer Literaturpreis.

Eleanor Updegraff makes her living from words in all forms: as a ghostwriter, translator of German, copy-editor and book reviewer, and author of short stories and creative non-fiction. After nine years in Austria, she now lives in Hampshire, where she can usually be found walking the Downs or browsing a local bookshop.Do you remember that first time, deciding to cook some- thing in your very own flat—it wasn’t much more than a room—and realizing only halfway through that you were going to have to run out and buy salt? You didn’t even own a salt cellar. So many things to think of in adult life! Your first salt—how would it taste?
How much at the beginning of things you were. Your first cup of coffee—back then with lots of sugar. First Chinese meal with friends. Your sister made a bet that she could put a teaspoon of red chilli powder in her mouth and swallow it down in one. Your first boyfriend, your first capricciosa with artichokes. Neither of you liked the taste of the red wine. You were so young; you’d have preferred Coca-Cola.
Your first whole cooked artichoke. In Rome—where else? In a tiny kitchen which you had to share with strangers. Living together wasn’t pleasant, in the end, but at the begin- ning it very much was.
In the beginning was the artichoke. And, on the table in front of you, a bowl containing salt, pepper, lemon and olive oil. Leaf by leaf, you pulled the big bud apart, working from the outside in, until you reached the core, the delicious arti- choke heart and the so-called choke from which you should have removed the hair. It tickled and stung when you sank your teeth into it. That sweet bitterness! Afterwards, you licked the oil and lemon from your fingers.
Your first oyster? Late—you were already in your mid- thirties. Watched the others as they pressed the chalky shells to their lips and let the live, slimy things slip into their mouths along with a swig of saltwater from the Pacific. You simply copied them. You hadn’t become accustomed to anything in your life, were hungry for each and every new flavour. The air was cold, the sun just on the point of setting, the light all pink and blue. That kind of thing can’t be planned, nor can it ever be repeated. Someone in the group had ordered a bottle of Sancerre; you were standing outside at Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market. The evening was beautiful, and none of it to be taken for granted.
That first salt? Sure, it tasted salty, the hostess exclaimed, and she laughed.