Unsavoury tastes … Saiyuud Diwong's Cooking with Poo, winner of the Diagram prize for the oddest book title of the year. Click for full cover. Photograph: The Bookseller
Recipe book derives its title from community chef and author Saiyuud Diwong’s nickname, which is Thai for crab.
By Alison Flood
If 30-minute meals with Jamie or domestic goddessdom with Nigella fail to tempt this evening then it might be worth considering the latest big thing in home cuisine, Cooking with Poo, which has just won the Diagram prize for the oddest book title of the year.
The 114-page cookbook derives its unsanitary title from author Saiyuud Diwong’s nickname, Poo, which is Thai for crab. Diwong lives in Bangkok’s Klong Toey slum, where she runs a community cookery school. Her book was crowned winner of the Diagram prize following a public vote, beating an array of oddments including Mr Andoh’s Pennine Diary: Memoirs of a Japanese Chicken Sexer in 1935 Hebden Bridge; The Great Singapore Penis Panic and the Future of American Mass Hysteria; and Estonian Sock Patterns All Around the World, to win the award.
“Given that this year the three most voted-for works contain the words ‘poo’, ‘sexer’ and ‘penis’ in the title, it appears that this year’s prize will go down in history as a blue year,” said the award’s custodian, Horace Bent. “But there is nothing wrong with that. Many of the world’s greatest writers have dabbled in off-colour humour, so I find Cooking with Poo a fitting winner.”
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