By Rebecca Stott

As each person understands, oysters are the final word aphrodisiac. Casanova is related to have eaten 50 uncooked oysters each morning together with his mistress of the instant, in a bath designed for 2. even if oysters actually have intriguing houses is open to discuss, yet like several seafoods, they include excessive quantities of phosphorus and iodine, that are believed to be conducive to stamina. writer and meals specialist M.F.K. Fisher wrote: "There are many the reason why an oyster is meant to have this fascinating caliber . . . such a lot of them are physiological, and feature to do with an oyster’s odour, its consistency, and possibly its strangeness."

As good as an aphrodisiac, the oyster has because the earliest occasions been an proposal to philosophers, artists, poets, cooks, gourmets, epicures and jewellers. it's been pursued by way of poachers and thieves, and defended by means of oyster-police and parliaments.

In Oyster, literary historian and radio broadcaster Rebecca Stott tells the intense tale of the oyster and its pearl, revealing how this curious creature has been used and depicted in human tradition and what it has variously intended to those that have both enjoyed or loathed it: the Romans carried much-sought-after British oysters around the Alps at the backs of donkeys to be eaten as food at banquets in Rome, when in contrast Woody Allen as soon as famously stated "I won't devour oysters. i need my nutrition lifeless – now not ill, no longer wounded – dead."

Using many strange pictures and anecdotes, Oyster will attract oyster enthusiasts and haters far and wide, and for these too who've an curiosity within the approach animals resembling the oyster have woven themselves into the material of our tradition.