Nicole Mones

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Nicole Mones is an American novelist. As of March 2007, she has published two novels, entitled Lost in Translation, which appeared in 1998 (not connected with the 2002 film of the same title), and A Cup of Light (2002). A third novel, The last Chinese Chef, has been announced for May 2007. Lost in Translation won the 1998 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize awarded by the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies and the Department of English at the University of Rochester for best work of fiction by an American woman. Mones' novels have been translated into at least 10 languages. She also contributes articles about Chinese cuisine to Gourmet magazine.

Nicole Mones lived and worked in China for 20 years from 1977, eighteen of them running a textile business, and all three of her published novels are set mainly in China. In all of them, a love story is entwined around a detailed and accurate description of a facet of Chinese culture: in Lost in Translation, the heroine becomes involved in an archaeological expedition to find the remains of Peking Man; the action of A Cup of Light turns around a rare collection of Chinese porcelain; and The Last Chinese Chef, as its name suggests, features Chinese cuisine.

Mones currently lives in Portland, Oregon.