Joanne Harris talks to Julia Wheeler

Joanne Harris returns to the world of Chocolat with the long-awaited story of Vianne. Twenty-five years after the publication of the Whitbread-shortlisted novel – adapted for film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp – the author discusses her prequel, set six years before Vianne opens her scandalous chocolaterie in the small French village of Lansquenet.

Sylviane Rochas scatters her mother’s ashes in New York and lets the changing wind blow her to the French seaside town of Marseille. For the first time in her life, Vianne holds the future in her own hands. As she discovers the joy of cooking for the first time, making recipes her own with the addition of bittersweet spices, she realises that it possesses its own, dangerous magic in this town full of secrets…