Eating mud crabs in Kandahar : stories of food during wartime by the world's leading correspondents / edited by Matt McAllester.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

McAllester, Matthew, 1969-

Series:

California studies in food and culture ; 31.

California studies in food and culture ; 31

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Survival and emergency rations--Anecdotes.

Survival and emergency rations.

Food habits--Anecdotes.

Food habits.

War correspondents--Anecdotes.

War correspondents.

Foreign journalists--Anecdotes.

Foreign journalists.

War and society--Anecdotes.

War and society.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (226 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

These sometimes harrowing, frequently funny, and always riveting stories about food and eating under extreme conditions feature the diverse voices of journalists who have reported from dangerous conflict zones around the world during the past twenty years. A profile of the former chef to Kim Jong Il of North Korea describes Kim's exacting standards for gourmet fare, which he gorges himself on while his country starves. A journalist becomes part of the inner circle of an IRA cell thanks to his drinking buddies. And a young, inexperienced female journalist shares mud crab in a foxhole with an equally young Hamid Karzai. Along with tales of deprivation and repression are stories of generosity and pleasure, sometimes overlapping. This memorable collection, introduced and edited by Matt McAllester, is seasoned by tragedy and violence, spiced with humor and good will, and fortified, in McAllester's words, with "a little more humanity than we can usually slip into our newspapers and magazine stories."

Contents:

Introduction : the name of the third chicken : Kosovo / Matt McAllester

Survival rations. Night light : El Salvador and Haiti / Lee Hockstader

A diet for dictators : North Korea / Barbara Demick

Siege food : Bosnia / Janine di Giovanni

Miraculous harvests : China / Isabel Hilton

Insistent hosts. How Harry lost his ear : Northern Ireland / Scott Anderson

Weighed down by a good meal : Gaza and Israel / Joshua Hammer

The price of oranges : Pakistan / Jason Burke

Jeweled rice : Iran / Farnaz Fassihi

The oversize helmsman of an undersize country : Israel / Matt Rees

Food under fire. Same-day cow : Afghanistan / Tim Hetherington

Eau de cadavre : Somalia and Rwanda / Sam Kiley

Eating mud crabs in Kandahar : Afghanistan / Christina Lamb

Munther cannot cook your turkey : Iraq / Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Breaking bread. The best man I ever knew : Georgia / Wendell Steavenson

Dinner with a jester : Afghanistan / Jon Lee Anderson

Sugarland : Haiti / Amy Wilentz

My life in pagans : Ossetia / James Meek

The house of bread : Bethlehem / Charles M. Sennott.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

9786613278210

9781283278218

1283278219

9780520949683

0520949684

OCLC:

755413387