Lilla's feast : a true story of food, love, and war in the Orient / Frances Osborne.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Osborne, Frances.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Casey, Lilla, 1882-1983.

Casey, Lilla.

British--China--Biography.

British.

British--India--Biography.

Prisoners of war.

India.

China.

World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, British.

World War, 1939-1945.

World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons, Japanese.

Prisoners of war--Great Britain--Biography.

Great Britain.

Prisoners of war--China--Biography.

Great Britain--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Personal narratives -- British.

Personal narratives.

Physical Description:

xiv, 280 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First American edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Ballantine Books, 2004.

Summary:

At the end of her life, Frances Osborne's one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother Lilla was as elegant as ever-all fitted black lace and sparkling-white diamonds. To her great-grandchildren, Lilla was both an ally and a mysterious wonder. Her bedroom was filled with treasures from every exotic corner of the world. But she rarely mentioned the Japanese prison camps in which she spent much of World War II, or the elaborate cookbook she wrote to help her survive behind the barbed wire.

Beneath its polished surface, Lilla's life had been anything but effortless. Born in 1882 to English parents in the beautiful North China port city of Chefoo, Lilla was an identical twin. Growing up, she knew both great privilege and deprivation, love and its absence. But the one constant was a deep appreciation for the power of food and place: from the noodles of Shanghai to the chutneys of India and the roasts of England. Lilla was raised to believe that delicious meals and sensuous surroundings could carry one a long way toward happiness. Her story is brimming with the stuff of good fiction: distant locales, an improvident marriage, an evil mother-in-law, a dramatic suicide, and two world wars. And yet it's all true.

Lilla's remarkable cookbook, which she composed while on the brink of starvation, makes no mention of wartime rations, of rotten vegetables and donkey meat. In the world of this magical food journal, now housed in the Imperial War Museum in London, everyone is warm and safe in their homes, and the pages are filled with cream puffs, butterscotch, and comforting soup. In its writing, Lilla was able to transform the darkest moments into scrumptious escape. Lilla's Feast is a rich evocation of a bygone world, the inspiring story of an ordinary woman who tackled the challenges life threw in her path with an extraordinary determination and creativity.

Contents:

Part I Love

Chapter 1 The Sweet Smell of Spice 5

Chapter 2 Heavenly Twins 21

Chapter 3 A "Not Quite Prudent" Marriage 35

Chapter 4 Burn This 45

Chapter 5 "Poor Little Lily" 59

Chapter 6 Melting Bitter Lemons 75

Chapter 7 In the Lap of the Gods 89

Chapter 8 The Tables Turn 106

Part II Peace

Chapter 9 An Almost Husband 129

Chapter 10 Going Home 151

Part III War

Chapter 12 Rice-Paper Recipes 183

Chapter 13 Eating Bitterness 192

Chapter 14 The Big Camp 204

Chapter 15 Hunger 216

Chapter 16 Survival 226

Chapter 17 Freedom 233

Part IV Refuge

Chapter 18 Stealing China 245

Chapter 19 Heavenly Twins Together Again 256.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [279]-280).

ISBN:

0345467000

OCLC:

54822276