Skip to main content

Richard C. Morais

Biography

Richard C. Morais

Richard C. Morais is the author of the New York Times and international bestseller THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY, a novel about an Indian chef who conquers the rarified world of French haute cuisine. The book sold in 35 territories around the world, and in 2014 Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey released The Hundred-Foot Journey as a popular film starring Helen Mirren and Om Puri.

Mr. Morais' sophomore novel, BUDDHALAND BROOKLYN, is about a Japanese Buddhist priest building a temple in Brooklyn. It, too, sold globally and is currently in development as a premium TV series with K&L Productions. His third novel, THE MAN WITH NO BORDERS, is the story of a Spanish private banker living in Switzerland with is American wife and coming to terms with his life. He also writes business biographies and wrote the critically acclaimed PIERRE CARDIN: The Man Who Became a Label.

Mr. Morais has a parallel career as an award-winning journalist. He was both the editor of Barron’s Penta, a highly-profitable glossy magazine for wealthy families; and Forbes’s European Bureau Chief, the magazine’s longest-serving foreign correspondent, stationed in London for 18 years. His brief at Forbes allowed him to travel anywhere in the world and to write on any subject that interested him. His unusual business stories --- from a controversial interview with Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street, to his profile of the low-key Indian billionaire Adi Godrej --- led to multiple journalism awards.

Mr. Morais uniquely won three awards and six nominations at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards, the only competition in the world where the best U.S. and British business journalists competed directly in a single event. His literary works, meanwhile, were semifinalists in the William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition and short-listed for Britain’s Ian St. James Award. Mr. Morais was named the 2015 Citizen Diplomat of the Year --- the highest honor granted by Global Ties U.S., a private-public partnership sponsored by the U.S. State Department --- “for promoting cross-cultural understanding in all of his literary work.”

Richard C. Morais

Books by Richard C. Morais

by Richard C. Morais - Fiction

Nearing the end of a long and tumultuous life, José María Álvarez --- an aristocratic Spanish banker living in a Swiss village with his American wife --- is overcome by hallucinatory memories of the past. Among his most cherished memories are those of his boyhood in 1950s Franco-era Spain and the bucolic afternoons he spent salmon fishing with his father, uncle and much-loved younger brother. But these fond reveries are soon eclipsed by something greater. José’s regrets and dark family secrets are flooding back, as is the devastating tragedy that drove José into exile and makes him bear the burden of a soul-deep guilt. Now, as his three estranged sons return to their father’s side, José hopes to outpace death long enough to finally put his house in order and exorcise its demons.

written by Richard C. Morais, read by Neil Shah - Fiction

Hassan Haji, a boy from Mumbai, embarks, along with his boisterous family, on a picaresque journey first to London and then across Europe, before they ultimately open a restaurant opposite a famous chef, Madame Mallory, in the remote French village of Lumiere. A culinary war ensues, pitting Hassan's Mumbai-toughened father against the imperious Michelin-starred cordon bleu, until Madame Mallory realizes that Hassan is a cook with natural talents far superior to her own.

by Richard C. Morais - Fiction

"That skinny Indian teenager has that mysterious something that comes along once a generation. He is one of those rare chefs who is simply born. He is an artist." And so begins the rise of Hassan Haji, the unlikely gourmand who recounts his life’s journey in Richard Morais’s charming novel, THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY. Lively and brimming with the colors, flavors and scents of the kitchen, THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY is a succulent treat about family, nationality and the mysteries of good taste.