Ebook: Eating mud crabs in Kandahar: stories of food during wartime by the world's leading correspondents

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.;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.