How to Feed a Dictator

Anthony Bourdain meets Kapuściński in this chilling look from within the kitchen at the appetites of five of the twentieth century’s most infamous dictators by the acclaimed author of Dancing Bears.

What was Pol Pot eating while two million Cambodians were dying of hunger? Did Idi Amin really eat human flesh? And why was Fidel Castro obsessed with one particular cow?

Traveling across four continents, from the ruins of Iraq to the savannahs of Kenya, Witold Szabłowski tracked down the personal chefs of five dictators known for the oppression and massacre of their own citizens—Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Uganda’s Idi Amin, Albania’s Enver Hoxha, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Cambodia’s Pol Pot—and listened to their stories over sweet-and-sour soup, goat-meat pilaf, bottles of rum, and games of gin rummy. Dishy, deliciously readable, and deadly serious, How to Feed a Dictator provides a knife’s-edge view of life under tyranny.