My Year of Meat by Ruth L. Ozeki

In a single eye-opening year two women, worlds apart, experience parallel awakenings. In New York, Jane Takagi-Little lands a job producing a Japanese television show sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, exposing some unsavoury truths - about the meat industry and herself. In Tokyo, housewife Akiko Ueno diligently prepares the recipes from Jane's programme. Struggling to please her husband, she increasingly doubts her commitment to the life she has fallen into.

As Jane and Akiko both battle to assert their individuality on opposite sides of the globe, they are drawn together in a startling story of strength, courage and love.

Smart, funny, irreverent - Guardian

There are not many novels that can justify the label "extraordinary" . . . It grapples with a quite astonishing pantheon of themes . . . The writing is witty, intelligent and passionate - Independent

Pulsates with passion . . . Ozeki's first novel detonates an attack on the meat industry that would make Upton Sinclair sit up and smile . . . yet all this energy doesn't obscure the novel's quirky charm - USA Today