tHE lAND wHERE lEMONS GROW
The Land Where Lemons Grow, The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit was a Sunday Times Bestseller. It was featured as BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’ in 2014 and won the Guild of Food Writers ‘Food Book of the Year’ in 2015. It was also shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year.
The research for it took me from a marmalade kitchen in the orange groves of eastern Sicily to the bloodied streets of Ivrea during the Battle of Oranges. The book emerging from my travels combines history and economics with recipes, art and poetry to take the reader on a journey through Italy’s cultural, moral and political past.
“Helena Attlee’s writing in The Land Where Lemons Grow is so sharp and evocative that she could have been writing about potatoes in Plymouth: she’d still have had me gripped.”
Yotam Ottolenghi, WALL STREET JOURNAL.
“4 stars. Attlee, who knows and loves Italy and the Italians, takes the reader through the country's scented gardens with her sharp descriptions, pertinent stories and quotes and intriguing recipes. I was there with her.”
Anna del Conte, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH.
Unmissable, essential for all lovers of Italy… she has transformed my view of the country.”
Robin Lane Fox, FINANCIAL TIMES