Paprika Paradise

Travels in the Land of My Almost Birth

For James Jeffrey, his mother?s homeland of Hungary has always featured in family stories ? sometimes as a fairytale land, other times as an exotic parallel universe. It is a place where storks build nests as large as tables on chimney tops and grandparents live in suburbs called Uranium Town. People say `hello? when they mean `goodbye?, have no word for `he? or `she?, and bestow an almost godlike status on cakes and lard.

It is the country where James?s mother, a volatile divorcee who could outflirt Zsa Zsa Gabor, and his father, a coal miner from a particularly sensible part of England, began an unlikely romance that lasted until the other end of the earth.

With his wife, children and still-warring parents in tow, James decided that the time had come to go back to Hungary. Their journey into the little-known paprika paradise is hilarious, thought-provoking and completely unpredictable.

`Joyous, illuminating and enchanting? Herald Sun