num_pages: 349
description: In the fall of 1991 while working at a gourmet deli in Ann Arbor Michigan Michael Paterniti encountered a piece of cheese. Not just any cheese. This was Paramo de Guzman a rare Spanish queso reputed to be the finest and most expensive in the world. The cheese carried its own legend: Made from an ancient family recipe in the medieval Castilian village of Guzman (pop. 80) the cheese was submerged in olive oil and aged in a cave where it gained magical qualities-if you ate it some said you might recover long-lost memories. Too broke to actually buy the cheese Paterniti made a quixotic vow: that he would meet this cheese again someday. Flash forward ten years when Paterniti has finally found his way-family in tow-to that tiny hilltop village to meet the famous cheesemaker himself a voluble magnetic heartbroken genius named Ambrosio. What Paterniti discovers in Guzman is nothing like the idyllic slow-food fable he has imagined. Instead he wanders into-and eventually becomes deeply implicated in-the heart of an unfolding mystery in which a village begins to spill its long-held secrets and nothing is quite what it seems.
language: English
title: The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese
publisher: The Dial Press