The Smoking Book

Lesley Stern has written a smart, witty literary book about a million things important to us, using hybrid forms: short story, essay, meditation--all of which spin like smoke from the cultural conceit of the cigarette. This is a book about Africa, tobacco, orality, movies, sex, culture, desire and loss. The globe-trotting narrator takes us through the streets of Manhattan, o'er the freeways of LA, into hotel rooms in Tokyo, dinner parties in Scotland, as well as the tobacco farms and factories in Zimbabwe. Great fun--a winner.