Join us in welcoming internationally acclaimed author and journalist Witold Szabłowski to Austin for How to Feed a Dictator Week—a culinary-literary journey inspired by Szabłowski’s remarkable work at the intersection of cuisine and conflict, power and people.
Each day will focus on a different facet of Szabłowski’s work and experience, inviting participants to explore the complexities of freedom, memory, and the role of the storyteller in shaping public understanding. We offer this series as a space for dialogue, reflection, and discovery, open to all who are curious about the world and the words we use to describe it.
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One of the most important Polish non-fiction writers and award-winning journalist who has written about Turkey, the Polish People’s Republic, dictators’ personal cooks, Chernobyl and Vladimir Putin’s grandfather. His books have been published on four continents, in over thirty countries. The rights to a book about cooks were bought by Hollywood. He is the author of “What’s Cooking in the Kremlin. From Rasputin to Putin, How Russia Built an Empire With A Knife And A Fork”, “How to Feed a Dictator-Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot Through the Eyes of Their Cooks”, and “Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny.” These are some of his books that were translated to English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones who also translated the Nobel laureate, Olga Tokarczuk. His book about Turkey, “The Assassin from Apricot City”, won two awards and was nominated for Poland’s most prestigious literary prize. When he was twenty-four he had a stint as a chef in Copenhagen, and at age twenty-five he became the youngest reporter at one of Poland’s largest daily newspapers (Gazeta Wyborcza), where he covered international stories in countries including Cuba, South Africa, and Iceland, and won awards for his features on the problem of illegal immigrants flocking to the European Union and about the 1943 massacre of Poles in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, he has been very involved in providing help. He also reports daily on the progress of the Ukrainian army on the Notatnik Reportera (“Reporter’s Notebook”) blog.
ABOUT OUR PROJECT
Szabłowski’s book What’s Cooking in the Kremlin opened our eyes—not just as readers, but as cultural curators. It’s more than a great read; it’s a brilliant lens through which to explore the mechanisms of power and the human condition, all through the universal language of food. That revelation led us to his other books—equally captivating, deeply human, and rich with insight.
So we reached out. And he said yes.
Drawing on his background as a journalist and a short stint as a chef, Szabłowski blends investigative storytelling with the shared rituals of the table. His books bring us into the kitchens of cooks who served dictators, into borderlands shaped by war and memory, and into everyday lives where meals carry meanings far beyond nourishment. We devised this 4-day series to feature conversations, shared meals, and hands-on cooking experiences in which the author will invite us to think of food as a tool for understanding history, culture, and one another.
QUOTES
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 dead serious, How to Feed a Dictator provides a knife’s-edge view of life under tyranny.―[From the publisher, Penguin Random House]
Reveal[s] the capricious and often banal underbelly of power. ―[From The Economist]
Two strengths of Szablowski’s book are its originality and topicality in a world increasingly governed by political strongmen―[From Kirkus Review]
THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS & SPONSORS
Zadanie dofinansowane w ramach sprawowania opieki Senatu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej nad Polonią i Polakami za granicą w 2025 roku
This project is supported in part by the City of Austin Office of Arts, Culture, Music and Entertainment.
