How to Cook Your Husband the African Way was a best selling novel in France. The heroine falls in love with the mysterious Bolobolo who lives with his mother who is very attached to her chicken. Maman talks to the bird all the time.

The heroine seduces Bolobolo with mouth-watering recipes but it will need more than fried antelope to turn Bolobolo into a proper man.

The book is a wry look at love and few works have ever illistrated the universal truth - that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach - better. Beyala interlaces her story with recipes, some of which even Heston Blumenthal hasn't tried to cook. The book won a number of awards in France.