How to Feed a Dictator: Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot Through the Eyes of Their Cooks by Witold Szabłowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book. The concept feels a little contrived but the way it’s executed, with the reporter travelling to track down his subjects intermixed with historical context, works really well and many of the cooks’ stories are surprisingly moving.
The author’s own first-person account of his challenges, first in finding, then in artfully questioning these cooks, who spent so much time in proximity to some of the last century’s most evil men, elevates the material beyond the initial “are you what you eat?” kind of analysis that Szablowski initially seems to be aiming for.
In fact, for a lot of the leaders’ diets profiled, the actual food doesn’t resonate in a metaphorical sense; the various diets and recipes all kind of bleed together by the end, and beyond the speculation that Idi Amin ate humans, or Saddam’s elaborate cakes, there is nothing overtly special about what these cooks prepared. But the devil is in the details and the notes on preparation and levels of specificity in and out of the kitchen prove very revealing.
The stories of the chefs themselves run the gamut from portraits in courage, to loyalty that straddles the line between honor and obsequious, to heartbreaking and tragic (one chef learns decades later that he was betrayed by a good friend). But there is also the paradox of self-deception that each of these men (and one woman) must go through as a matter of survival, and the lingering impact that has on their lives becomes one of the more interesting threads in the book.
Some of Szablowski’s subjects ignore his more probing questions, others protest, and one breaks down in tears at a particularly thorny inquiry, as if unable to cope when confronted with the possibility they were accessories to a true monster. As one might expect, many of these cooks have the unique experience of living on the extreme ends of the socioeconomic spectrum (no spoilers but you can deduce for yourself the direction that trajectory has landed them at present).
I believe that this book will appeal to both history buffs and those like me, who have only passing familiarity with some of these figures (I did not know anything about Enver Hoxha before reading this book). There is some flavor of travelogue in this book as well and we get some rich scene-setting as Szablowski hops from one subject to the next.
Overall this is a really intriguing and effective way of exploring the lives of dictators and those who lived in their sphere of influence; figures who were near, even intimately so, but also only adjacent, to these paragons of authoritarian power.
Also worth noting that this is a remarkably quick read. The writing is colorful and thoughtful but moves quickly; maybe that was also because I found the material so compelling.
Culture Time 