Day of Atonement - Couverture souple

Ingredients: It is the early Sixties. Down the side of a dilapidated synagogue in North-west London, a great partnership is born. Apart, Mal Jones and Solly Princeton are two teenage no-hopers scrabbling about in the dirt. Together they are dynamite: a world-beating team who turn a company selling chicken-soup machines to the Jewish mothers of Edgware into an international hotel and leisure empire. But success is never simple. Before long pressures draw them away from the comforts of their roots. They find themselves cutting corners, taking risks and breaking the law. Finally Mal has to confront his life, his friendship with Solly and where their very different ambitions have led them. Thirty-five years later as sunset ushers in the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, Mal, his fortune gone, picks over the ruins of his past with his niece, Natasha. He tells her the story of the Sinai Corporation, of his best friend and business partner, Solly, and at last begins to ask himself: how far must you go before you lose faith in yourself?

Jay Rayner is an award-winning writer, journalist and broadcaster who now writes for The Observer. His first novel, The Marble Kiss, was published in 1994. He is married and lives in London. Jay presents The Kitchen Cabinet, a foodie panel show for BBC Radio 4, is the food reporter for BBC1’s One Show and is a regular critic on Britain's Masterchef. As well as Day of Atonement, he is the author of seven other books including, most recently, A Greedy Man In A Hungry World and the novel The Apologist, also available in eBook from Studio 28.