Synopses & Reviews
Travel books bring us to places. War books bring us to tragedy. This book brings us to one woman’s travels in war zones: the locals she met, the compassion they scraped from catastrophe, and the food they ate.
Peace Meals is a true story about conflict and food. It illustrates the most important lesson Anna Badkhen has observed as a journalist: war can kill our friends and decimate our towns, but it cannot destroy our inherent decency, generosity, and kindness—that which makes us human. Badkhen writes:
There is more to war than the macabre—the white-orange muzzle flashes during a midnight ambush . . . the scythes of shrapnel whirling . . . like lawnmower blades spun loose; the tortured and the dead. There are also the myriad brazen, congenial, persistent ways in which life in the most forlorn and violent places on earth shamelessly reasserts itself. Of those, sharing a meal is one of the most elemental.
No other book about war has looked at the search for normalcy in conflict zones through the prism of food. In addition to the events that dominate the news today—the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—Peace Meals also bears witness to crises that are less often discussed: the conflict in Chechnya, the drought cycle in East Africa, the failed post-Soviet states, the Palestinian intifada.
Peace Meals focuses on day-to-day life, describing not just the shocking violence but also the beauty that continues during wartime: the spring flowers that bloom in the crater hollowed by an air-to-surface missile, the lapidary sanctuary of a twelfth-century palace besieged by a modern battle, or a meal a tight-knit family shares in the relative safety of their home as a firefight rages outside. It reveals how one war correspondent’s professional choices are determined not only by her opinion of which story is important but also by the instinctive comparisons she, a young
mother, makes each time she meets children in war zones; by her intrinsic sense of guilt for leaving her family behind as she goes off to her next dangerous assignment; and, quite prosaically—though not surprisingly—by her need to eat.
Wherever Badkhen went, she broke bread with the people she wrote about, and the simple conversations over these meals helped her open the door into the lives of strangers. Sometimes dinner was bread and a fried egg in a farmer’s hut, or a packet of trail mix in the back of an armored humvee. Sometimes it was a lavish, four-course meal at the house of a local warlord, or a plate of rice and boiled meat at a funeral tent. Each of these straightforward acts of humanity tells a story. And these stories, punctuated by recipes from these meals, form Peace Meals. Following Badkhen’s simple instructions, readers will taste what made life in these tormented places worth living.
Review
“Anna Badkhen writes about war with a beautiful sensuality, connecting us to those otherwise nameless, faceless fighters and indigenous peoples ensnared in its horrors and hardships.
Peace Meals takes us into these people’s kitchens, and into their souls.”
Norman Ollestad, author of New York Times bestseller Crazy for the Storm“Anna Badkhen is a hero among women war correspondent, wife, mother, diplomat, and, with the publication of this book, a sensitive and lyrical human-interest reporter from the outer reaches of the world. Peace Meals takes us not only into the hearts and homes of some of the least-understood (and most interesting) people in war zones, it fearlessly explores the wrenching moral conflicts every war journalist faces. This is a beautiful, vivid, gripping book with some fabulous recipes.”
Amy Chua, author of World on Fire and Day of Empire“Peace Meals is an extraordinary mosaic built of keen observation and uncommon compassion. So much more than mere war reportage, Badkhen attunes her ear to fundamental questions that war time activities: what are the causes of hate and what are the measurable and immeasurable costs of war? What does it mean to resist, to persist, and when is it worth it? Badkhen maintains an unswerving gaze not only at the complex subject matters she investigates but also at her own role as a reporter. Always her conclusions resonant with authenticity and compassion as she renders accounts that neither judge nor praise; neither sensationalize nor diminish. People are more than their stories, Badkhen asserts line by line. Because of this Badkhen can find beauty in the brokenness. She describes a profound generosity evidenced with astonishing regularity. It comes in the most humble and necessary of human acts: eating.”
Gina Ochsner, author of The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight"The philosophical connection is interesting...absorbing observations...An intriguing premise." Kirkus"Illuminates the strange, dark history of the past couple of decadesthe wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and drought-stricken East Africa. Most chapters chronicle her connections with particular individuals...each character providing insight into local customs and quirks, but more significantly, illustrates and humanizes regional complexities. Badkhen regularly encounters real danger, but meets it with compassion and graveyard humor...the resulting range of events both large and small is both honest and real." Publishers Weekly"Promising...With careful observation, [Badkhen] sees beyond the heartbreaking stories of the families and soldiers, refugees and warlords, she meets. Her eloquent, honest words tell an in-depth history of recent war, and also make known courageous and resourceful people whose actions, or lack thereof, are forced by circumstance." Christian Science Monitor"[A] gritty memoir of Afghanistan and Iraq that focuses not on frontline reportage but on behind-the-scenes kindnesses of local families, many of whom shared their hearths, and their bread, with the foreign journalist. In Peace Meals [Badkhen] uses those simple meals as a window, a graceful way to bear witness to the devastation she was covering. But don't think that her book is about food. It's about humanity." Entertainment Weekly
Review
PRAISE FOR PEACE MEALS
andquot;[A] gritty memoir of Afghanistan and Iraq that focuses not on frontline reportage but on behind-the-scenes kindnesses of local families, many of whom shared their hearths, and their bread, with the foreign journalist. Inandnbsp;Peace Mealsandnbsp;[Badkhen] uses those simple meals as a window, a graceful way to bear witness to the devastation she was covering. But don't think that her book is about food. It's about humanity.andquot; andndash;Entertainment Weekly
andquot;[Badkhen] sees beyond the heartbreaking stories of the families and soldiers, refugees and warlords, she meets. Her eloquent, honest words tell an in-depth history of recent war, and also make known courageous and resourceful people whose actions, or lack thereof, are forced by circumstance.andquot; andndash;Christian Science Monitor
Review
“Anna Badkhen writes about war with a beautiful sensuality, connecting us to those otherwise nameless, faceless fighters and indigenous peoples ensnared in its horrors and hardships.
Peace Meals takes us into these people’s kitchens, and into their souls.”
—Norman Ollestad, author of New York Times bestseller Crazy for the Storm
Review
“Anna Badkhen is a hero among women —war correspondent, wife, mother, diplomat, and, with the publication of this book, a sensitive and lyrical human-interest reporter from the outer reaches of the world.
Peace Meals takes us not only into the hearts and homes of some of the least-understood (and most interesting) people in war zones, it fearlessly explores the wrenching moral conflicts every war journalist faces. This is a beautiful, vivid, gripping book —with some fabulous recipes.”
—Amy Chua, author of World on Fire and Day of Empire
Review
“
Peace Meals is an extraordinary mosaic built of keen observation and uncommon compassion. So much more than mere war reportage, Badkhen attunes her ear to fundamental questions that war time activities: what are the causes of hate and what are the measurable and immeasurable costs of war? What does it mean to resist, to persist, and when is it worth it? Badkhen maintains an unswerving gaze not only at the complex subject matters she investigates but also at her own role as a reporter. Always her conclusions resonant with authenticity and compassion as she renders accounts that neither judge nor praise; neither sensationalize nor diminish. People are more than their stories, Badkhen asserts line by line. Because of this Badkhen can find beauty in the brokenness. She describes a profound generosity evidenced with astonishing regularity. It comes in the most humble and necessary of human acts: eating.”
—Gina Ochsner, author of The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight
Review
"The philosophical connection is interesting...absorbing observations...An intriguing premise." —Kirkus
Review
"Illuminates the strange, dark history of the past couple of decades—the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and drought-stricken East Africa. Most chapters chronicle her connections with particular individuals...each character providing insight into local customs and quirks, but more significantly, illustrates and humanizes regional complexities. Badkhen regularly encounters real danger, but meets it with compassion and graveyard humor...the resulting range of events both large and small is both honest and real." —Publishers Weekly
Review
"Promising...With careful observation, [Badkhen] sees beyond the heartbreaking stories of the families and soldiers, refugees and warlords, she meets. Her eloquent, honest words tell an in-depth history of recent war, and also make known courageous and resourceful people whose actions, or lack thereof, are forced by circumstance." —Christian Science Monitor
Review
"[A] gritty memoir of Afghanistan and Iraq that focuses not on frontline reportage but on behind-the-scenes kindnesses of local families, many of whom shared their hearths, and their bread, with the foreign journalist. In Peace Meals [Badkhen] uses those simple meals as a window, a graceful way to bear witness to the devastation she was covering. But don't think that her book is about food. It's about humanity." —Entertainment Weekly
Review
"In an age when writers too often see Afghanistan from behind guarded compound walls, Badkhen places herself alone, for a year, in rural Afghanistan. This perspectiveand#8212;animated by her love of the country, and her hostsand#8212;yields a remarkable account of the rhythms, the wit, and the energy of village life." and#8211;Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between
and#8220;Nearly a hundred and eighty degrees around the globe, and even farther from our imagining, Anna Badkhen captures with an unerring eyeand#8212;and just as powerfully, in the haunting cadences of her narrativeand#8212;the strange, harsh beauty of an unvanquished way of life.and#8221; and#8211;William Langewiesche, author of Sahara Unveiled, American Ground, and The Outlaw Sea
Review
"A fearless author regards the Afghans on their own termsand#8230; Enormously detailed and movingand#8230;and#173; a dense, intimate portrayal of an ancient people.and#8221; and#8211;Kirkus
"In an age when writers too often see Afghanistan from behind guarded compound walls, Badkhen places herself alone, for a year, in rural Afghanistan. This perspectiveand#8212;animated by her love of the country, and her hostsand#8212;yields a remarkable account of the rhythms, the wit, and the energy of village life." and#8211;Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between
and#8220;Nearly a hundred and eighty degrees around the globe, and even farther from our imagining, Anna Badkhen captures with an unerring eyeand#8212;and just as powerfully, in the haunting cadences of her narrativeand#8212;the strange, harsh beauty of an unvanquished way of life.and#8221; and#8211;William Langewiesche, author of Sahara Unveiled, American Ground, and The Outlaw Sea
Review
"Like so many pieces of yarn, [Badkhen] weaves the words of Persian poets, Western explorers, contemporary journalists and scholars into her narrative, enriching her own account with those that came beforeand#8230; a powerful, unsentimental study of life persisting in extreme conditions. Perhaps the greatest testament to her success is that, upon reading the final page, the reader wonders how the people populating her narrative are faring, and desperately hopes that they are all right." and#8211;The New York Observer
"Badkhen makes friends and shares their stories, drawing readers into this small village where the dream of wealth is hope for a life without sufferingand#8230; A beautifully written book of eternal heartbreak." and#8211;Booklist (starred review)
"A fearless author regards the Afghans on their own termsand#8230; Enormously detailed and movingand#8230;and#173; a dense, intimate portrayal of an ancient people.and#8221; and#8211;Kirkus
"In an age when writers too often see Afghanistan from behind guarded compound walls, Badkhen places herself alone, for a year, in rural Afghanistan. This perspectiveand#8212;animated by her love of the country, and her hostsand#8212;yields a remarkable account of the rhythms, the wit, and the energy of village life." and#8211;Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between
"Nearly a hundred and eighty degrees around the globe, and even farther from our imagining, Anna Badkhen captures with an unerring eyeand#8212;and just as powerfully, in the haunting cadences of her narrativeand#8212;the strange, harsh beauty of an unvanquished way of life." and#8211;William Langewiesche, author of Sahara Unveiled, American Ground, and The Outlaw Sea
Synopsis
INCLUDES WAITING FOR THE TALIBAN, PREVIOUSLY AVAILABLE ONLY AS AN EBOOK2011 JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION WRITING AND LITERATURE AWARD FINALIST
Travel books bring you places. War books bring you tragedy. In Peace Meals, war reporter Anna Badkhen brings us not only an unsparing and intimate history of some of the last decade’s most vicious conflicts but also the most human elements that transcend the dehumanizing realities of war: the people, the compassion they scraped from catastrophe, and the food they ate.
Making palpable the day-to-day life during conflicts and catastrophes, Badkhen describes not just the shocking violence but also the beauty of events that take place even during wartime: the spring flowers that bloom in the crater hollowed by an air-to-surface missile, the lapidary sanctuary of a twelfth-century palace besieged by a modern battle, or a meal a tight-knit family shares as a firefight rages outside. Throughout Badkhen’s stories, punctuated by recipes from the meals she shared with the people she encountered, emerges the most important lesson she has observed in conflict zones from Afghanistan to Chechnya: that war can kill our friends and decimate our towns, but it cannot destroy our inherent decency, generosity, and kindness—that which makes us human.
Synopsis
An unforgettable portrait of a place and a people shaped by centuries of art, trade, and war.
In the middle of the salt-frosted Afghan desert, in a village so remote that Google canandrsquo;t find it, a woman squats on top of a loom, making flowers bloom in the thousand threads she knots by hand. Here, where heroin is cheaper than rice, every day is a fast day. B-52s pass overheadandmdash;a sign of Americaandrsquo;s omnipotence or its vulnerability, the villagers are unsure. They know, though, that the earth is flatandmdash;like a carpet.
Anna Badkhen first traveled to this country in 2001, as a war correspondent. She has returned many times since, drawn by a land that geography has made a perpetual battleground, and by a people who sustain an exquisite tradition there. Through the four seasons in which a new carpet is woven by the women and children of Oqa, she immortalizes their way of life much as the carpet doesandmdash;from the petal half-finished where a hungry infant needs care to the interruptions when the women trade sex jokes or go fill in for wedding musicians scared away by the Taliban. As Badkhen follows the carpet out into the world beyond, she leaves the reader with an indelible portrait of fates woven by centuries of art, war, and an ancient trade that ultimately binds the invaded to the invader.
About the Author
Anna Badhken was born in the Soviet Union and moved to a Massachusetts suburb in 2004. She has been covering conflicts since 2001, first for the San Francisco Chronicle, and later, for such publications as The New Republic, The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, Salon.com, Ms. Magazine, Marie Claire, PBS Frontline/World, the National (Abu Dhabi), Center for Investigative Reporting, and Truthdig.com. Her wartime reporting won the 2007 Joel R. Seldin Award for reporting on civilians in war zones from Psychologists for Social Responsibility. She also was a finalist, in 2002 and 2005, for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists in the International Reporting category. She is 34 years old.