#publisher Books RSS feed Thrillers RSS feed Fiction RSS feed Culture RSS feed Travel RSS feed Marseille RSS feed France RSS feed Europe RSS feed Life and style RSS feed French food and drink RSS feed Turn autoplay off Turn autoplay on Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off * Jump to content [s] * Jump to comments [c] * Jump to site navigation [0] * Jump to search [4] * Terms and conditions [8] Edition: UK US AU * Your activity * Email subscriptions * Account details * Linked services Profile Mobile About us * About us, * Contact us * Press office * Guardian Print Centre * Guardian readers' editor * Observer readers' editor * Terms of service * Privacy policy * Advertising guide * Digital archive * Digital edition * Guardian Weekly * Buy Guardian and Observer photos Today's paper * Main section * Comment * Sport * New Review * Magazine * Observer Tech Monthly * Observer Food Monthly Subscribe The Guardian home * News * Sport * Comment * Culture * Business * Money * Life & style * Travel * Environment * Tech * TV * Video * Dating * Offers * Jobs * Culture * Books Garlic, Mint, & Sweet Basil: Essays on Marseilles, Mediterranean Cuisine, and Noir Fiction by Jean-Claude Izzo â review This evocative and passionate collection of essays from the French crime writer is a paean to the life, cities and food of the Mediterranean * Share * Tweet this * * [pin_it_button.png] * * Email * PD Smith * * The Guardian, Friday 10 May 2013 16.17 BST Jump to comments (…) Le Panier, one of the oldest area in Marseilles, France. "Wherever you are from, you feel at home in Marseilles" ⦠Jean-Claude Izzo on his hometown. Photograph: Alamy 1. Garlic, Mint and Sweet Basil 2. by Jean-Claude Izzo 3. 4. [BUTTON] Buy the book 1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book Izzo published his first novel at the age of 50 in 1995. Total Chaos â part of the Marseilles trilogy, which is published for the first time in the UK this month â helped define the crime sub-genre now known as Mediterranean noir. Izzo died just five years later. He began writing travel pieces for newspapers in the 1970s and this evocative new collection of essays â which sadly are undated â is a paean to the life, cities and food of the Mediterranean, particularly his home, Marseilles: "Wherever you are from, you feel at home in Marseilles." The world is full of beautiful cities, but Marseilles has an inner beauty: "her humanity". A former communist and the "son of an exile" (he had an Italian mother and a Spanish father), he writes passionately about the city's "hospitality, tolerance, respect for others". He writes with equal passion about the "poor man's cuisine": "When I eat, I like to feel Marseilles pulsating beneath my tongue." Writing crime fiction, says Izzo, is not a form of activism, but "a way of conveying my doubts, my anxieties, my joys, my pleasures". His essays, too, reveal a man of deep feeling and humanity. Daily Email close Sign up for the Guardian Today Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. Sign up for the daily email What did you think? 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A version appeared on p18 of the Guardian review section of the Guardian on Saturday 11 May 2013. It was last modified at 23.40 BST on Wednesday 3 July 2013. Books * Thrillers · * Fiction Culture Travel * Marseille · * France · * Europe Life and style * French food and drink More reviews * Share * Tweet this * * * Email Comments Click here to join the discussion. We can't load the discussion on theguardian.com because you don't have JavaScript enabled. Writing courses from the Guardian * Adapting novels to the screen masterclass If you're a writer or an aspiring writer, the Guardian has a masterclass to help. Whether you're on your first novel or you're looking to write for stage or screen, we have the experts to help. Browse our creative writing and publishing courses * Writer David Almond Start to write: story telling and imagination with David Almond 18-19 January 2014, London We're surrounded by stories from the day we're born - and yet writing our own can seem impossibly hard. 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