Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar: Stories of Food During Wartime by the World's Leading Correspondents (California Studies in Food and Culture)

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."

"We read a lot, perhaps too much about 'X-treme' food and macho food adventures these days, but this anthology calls to mind a better side of the subject: by showing us how food affects us in the most improbable and resistant circumstances, it reminds us again and again of why eating is one of the great continuities of life, even in scary places with scary people and scary-seeming plates." --Adam Gopnik, author of The Table Comes First

"Compelling and powerful, these personal accounts by reporters assigned to hot spots from Haiti to Kosovo, from Rwanda to Kandahar, cut to the bone. They expose the hard truth that hunger for survival is as universal as battle, that food itself is a metaphor for war, and that eating is war by other means. This is a brilliant collection of stories that satisfies our hunger for words with the intensity of our hunger to live." --Betty Fussell, author of My Kitchen Wars and Raising Steaks

"These are powerful, intimate stories from some of the best war correspondents of our time--the kind of stories they tell each other about everyday life in some of the most difficult places on Earth. By seducing you with simple tales of food, your defenses are down, you get lost in a good tale, and then, suddenly, you realize that you are fascinated by and finally understand a part of the world that had previously just been confusing and overwhelming. With one great read after another, you will remember these scenes, these characters, for a long time." --Adam Davidson, founder and host, NPR's Planet Money

"The way to a nation's soul is through its stomach, and that is precisely the territory that these writers explore in this delightful anthology. Whether breaking bread with Palestinian militants, enduring army rations with US troops in Afghanistan or attempting to cook a turkey in Baghdad, they write with dollops of humanity, heapings of insight, and a dash of humor. Read this book but be forewarned: you'll turn the last page hungry for more." --Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss

Matt McAllester is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a contributing editor at Details magazine. He is the author of Bittersweet: Lessons from My Mother's Kitchen, Blinded by Sunlight: Surviving Abu Graib and Saddam's Iraq, and Beyond the Mountains of the Damned: The War Inside Kosovo. He is also Visiting Professor of Journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches international reporting. His website is www.mcallester.com.

Introduction: The Name of the Third Chicken: Kosovo

Matt McAllester

Part One: 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

Part Two: 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

Part Three: 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

Part Four: 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

Biographies

Acknowledgments

Index