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At the end of Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children (1981), the narrator, Saleem Sinai, “pickles time”, storing thirty years of Indian independence in as many jars of pickle, a very hot and strong Indian sauce which will help him to retrieve and preserve his and his nation’s lost time. A comparison between Rushdie’s pickles and Proust’s sweet madeleine is the starting point of this essay. In the West an individual’s lost time can return unexpectedly from the delicate taste of a sweet cookie dipped in tea; in the Indian subcontinent the historical past of a whole ex-colonial collectivity needs strong flavours and to be tasted violently in order for its powerful and unadulterated taste to be savoured – a flavour, this, that might also leave whoever tastes it unsatisfied, literally open-mouthed in shock. In the same way, Rushdie’s use of collective memory is opposed to Proust’s individual intermittences du cœur.

Il testo ricostruisce il nesso tra cultura, identità e costumi alimentari in diverse opere brasiliane o, comunque, dedicate al Brasile, composte tra il XVI e il XX secolo

Le motif de l'ile vue comme un non-lieu dans deux romans contemporains: "Gould's Book of Fish" de l'australien Richard Flanagan et "England, England" de l'anglais Julian Barnes.