Decent Ingredients

In 1956, Helsinki housewife Saara befriends her upstairs neighbor Elisabeth, who throws parties for artists, lives to eat and corresponds with faraway friends. As they get to know each other, Saara learns that Elisabeth is everything Saara is not: fashionable, independent, a citizen of the world. And a spy.

With echoes of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway  and Linn Ullmann’s domestic portrayals, Decent Ingredients is a story about the bourgeoisie of Helsinki during the Cold War; about forbidden love, dangerous secrets and, about food, which reflects life, love, class, sexuality and politics throughout this richly-detailed and atmospheric novel by the award-winning Parkkinen.